From my Memories

It smelled. Maybe like old people, maybe like a hospital, maybe both. I also don’t remember why I was there, I just was. 

She loved to play cards, especially solitaire. Long fingernails shuffling the cards, scraping at the table, they even curled a little they were so long. She tried to teach me how to play, but I never got the hang of it. Her breath stank the most, I would smell it whenever she would sigh because I made yet another mistake. I couldn’t have been over 12. 

She started to memorize my schedule, it seemed. Whenever I visited the home she would be there, waiting. She wasn’t necessarily nice though, got mad when I asked her to repeat something I didn’t understand. 

She had long silver hair always up in a bun. I think I might have brushed it once. Most of the time we spent together was quiet.

“They never come to visit,” she said one day. I don’t think I said anything in response. I was shocked. “They just took my money and put me here so they wouldn’t have to deal with me.” Is what she said, or at least something around those lines. She was kind of cruel, but most of all, she was lonely. Abandoned by her own family, going through the motions and activities at the home, But when bratty little me visited her, she would wait for me, and I hope that meant something. 

I don’t remember her name, or when I stopped going, but I did eventually. I pass by the home I wonder what happened to her. I wonder if she died alone.