Recollections

Age; An incurable illness, but far less harsh than the disease of loneliness.

A frail figure of a different time, quietly rested in a rickety chair. If only the porch beneath his feet could tell tales of the past, now only ever left with just an audience of one. The old man was as still and colourless as the sullen oak trees in a bitter winter, just as aged and as much forgotten. He sat in silence and sunk into the few remaining remnants of dreams, dreams of a different time. His time. Where the walls where a few shades brighter, his faded smile a few shades lighter. Once, he was a younger man of charisma and character, always a man gentle nature. Now all that remained where frail bones and tired eyes. As days swept passed the window into recollections of better times gradually grew frosted and stained, the view almost entirely faded away.

 

As the years dragged on it felt as if parts of him crumbled and fell to pieces, to be swept away like autumn leaves. He developed a sense of wisdom, only to fall on ears as deaf as his own. He was a forgotten rose of a forgotten garden, the frost had seeped and set in. The fragile roses around him withered and fell to the cold soil. They would wait for him, but wouldn't have to wait for long. The growing burden of age was as relentless on the body as it was unforgiving on the soul. Once, his heart and mind held beliefs and hopes, the dreams of faith he cherished most. Eventually they decayed, scattered to the bitter winds as ashes like the friends he loved and lost.

 

As the sun set bellow the horizon beyond he was faced with a familiar revelation that confronted him a thousand times before. A moment of clarity that burned as bright as the hues that sprawled across the skies and challenged him just as often. Time. A concept. A creation. A measurement of mortality, not some machine to blame for our dwindling opportunities of redemption, moments to reclaim lost love or to do things we never did. We created a scapegoat that never existed to blame for the things we never let happen. One could shift the burdens of mistakes and regrets to the shoulders of the ages and still face the grave just as bitter. An hourglass was but an innocent mechanism to the harsh shadows cast of loneliness. He had no quarrels with time, it was a fight he never entered but was losing just the same. He was a man of a different age. Soon, that would be the only place he remained.