Time Well Spent

Life hadn’t always been this empty. Esme could remember that much.

Everyone in this place had ended up alone but Esme had been alone before her time. She hadn’t felt the need to be married, had never wanted children. It was almost unheard of then but Esme didn’t care for opinions; her life had been too full already, suffused to bursting with ideas and activities, books and people, love and laughter. She never regretted any of it.

Time had crept up slowly and suddenly. In her eighty years she had seen all the joys and tragedies of a thousand lives and she had made good use of it all. A subtle and calm wisdom gradually replaced her exuberant intellect and burning desires.

The trouble was that, as all happiness proved transitory and eventually faded, so each sadness lingered and locked itself away for keeps. How could one person hold so much sadness? Esme knew that people had an infinite capacity for such things. What a terrible burden it would be to live forever.

There were no happy people in this place. Most of them were not unhappy but the weight of years had flattened their senses. Nobody could be happy here, at any rate. A malingering brown shade covered the furnishings and floors; the walls were a pale and sickly yellow. The air was somehow flaccid.

They were all still breathing though, if not actually alive. Life was more than functioning organs. Esme had forgotten much of the recent past, forgotten even how she came to be in this spiritless community. Only the old times remained bright, vividly beckoning with aching reminders. She couldn’t relate to anyone here; none of them knew or cared who she really was; they were all trapped under jars of their own.

They were waiting for something, that much was sure, even if nobody really knew what; time had spread out to a seemingly infinite space, occasionally punctuated only by repetitions. The world moved along, regardless.

Outside of the large window another day was drawing to a close, the insipid blue of the sky saturating itself with grey; the grey of the pavements, the grey of the people who shuffled silently behind her. It crept just like time and like time there would always be more.

Leaning back in her soft brown chair, Esme folded her arms, closed her eyes and drowned herself once more in the lights of the past.