The place hadn't really changed.
The exterior might be painted a different color, a more modern front porch and up to date windows, but overall, the house looked the exact same as the last time Boris had been here, which was...hell, he couldn't even recall. Had it really been that long, or was his memory just getting that bad that quickly? As he, John, Whittle and Jenn got out of the car and approached the house, Whittle taking the lead, Boris couldn't help but feel somewhat embarrassed. He didn't particularly want the others here, just John. Whittle knocked on the door, and a man in his early fourties opened it. He was wearing loafers, a light blue button down shirt and brown slacks. He smiled at her politely, as if he'd met her before. "Hi," Whittle said, "I'm a hospice nurse, and this man," she motioned towards Boris coming up behind them, "is my patient, and he's...he's had a stroke, and he doesn't have much time left, and we were hoping to maybe get into the house to help him gain peace. See, this is where he grew up and-" "Absolutely," the man said, happily stepping aside, allowing them all entrance. Boris was surprised. That had been far easier than he'd expected it to be. As the man stepped out of their way and the group entered, Boris immediately transported back in time, but...not in the way he wanted. He stumbled going over the threshold, and felt John stabilize him as they continued inside. "Wow," Boris said, "this place looks almost identical." "Yeah, we're big about keeping stuff true to form," the man said, "I'm Roger, by the way." Roger held out his hand and everyone shook it gladly, just as another man entered from the kitchen, finishing drying a glass cup. Everyone turned to look at him. "What's going on?" he asked. "Wallace, this is..." Roger said. "Uh, I'm Father John Krickett, and this is Boris. He grew up here," John said, "we're just coming back for some closure before his death." "Ah, well, welcome back then," Wallace said, smiling as he headed back into the kitchen. "So, you've kept the interior original?" John asked, as he and Boris walked a bit away further into the house with Roger. "Well, we've had to open things up to modernize, you know, fix plumbing, electrical, but otherwise yeah," Roger said, putting his hands in his pants pockets as they headed into the hallway, "it's basically the same house as it was when you lived here, more or less." Boris could hear them talking, but he wasn't really listening. All his focus was being pulled towards his old bedroom. He stopped in the hallway and stared at the door, before reaching out and putting his hand on the knob and turning it slowly. The door opened, and Boris reached inside the room, feeling around on the wall for a light switch. Once flicked, the room flooded with light, and Boris had to squint momentarily in order to see. It looked exactly the same, except for the furniture. Boris stepped inside and stood in the middle of the room, before noticing Jenn was standing beside him. "Does it make you nostalgic?" she asked, "Sometimes when I visit my parents, I go to my old bedroom, it makes me nostalgic, wanting to be young again." "You are young," Boris replied, smirking, "but no, not particularly. I wouldn't give up my age for another shot at life. What's done is done. It's written in the history books now. My time here is over. It's just nice to see it again. Makes life feel very circular." John entered, as Jenn backed out with Whittle, conversing with the men who owned the home. Boris reached back and shut the door, as if wanting privacy. He then approached the desk in the room and reached out, touching it, as John walked towards the bed and sat down, glancing around the room with some regularity. "It all feels so distant and yet so recent," Boris whispered, his fingers on the vintage oak desktop, "...a whole other lifetime ago, but...but it doesn't feel like that. Isn't that strange? An entire life condensed to a few memories, feeling less like years and more like seconds? They say you blink and you miss it. That it all goes so fast. Doesn't feel fast when it's happening, but then...then you reach the end and you wonder where it all went." John crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap, listening as Boris walked to the window and felt the curtains. "I can remember being a young boy in this room," Boris continued, "reading, listening to the radio, writing poetry. Never ocurred to me then that I might leave it someday, never to return. But...I guess that's what life is, right? Loss? Acceptance of that loss?" "I don't think that's true," John said, "I think life is about many things. Certainly loss is one of them, but it isn't the primary. A range of emotions is necessary, not just honing in on one in particular. If you only focus on one, you're not fully living life to its capacity." Boris nodded, listening, but not responding. He could remember being a young boy, spending long summer days in this room, reading or writing or listening to the radio. He could almost envision it so clearly and he was amazed at how vivid the imagery of something from so long ago could still be in his head, as if it had just happened yesterday. Finally he turned back, leaning against the desk for support, and looking at John. "It's only natural to want to see the beginning at the end," John said, shrugging. "What if there is no beginning or end? What if there's just one line line that never starts or finishes? That's how time works anyway, right? And we're all just living on times watch, so...my life is merely a portion of that. My life isn't significant enough to warrant its own timeline, its own start or completion. It's nothing more than a millisecond in an eternity. Ridding yourself of a beginning and end...that opens you up to a whole new world of thinking, like...maybe, in some way, you're immortal." "The only person who's immortal is God," John said, smirking, and Boris chuckled. "So far," Boris replied. Out in the kitchen, Jenn and Whittle were seated with Roger, eating crackers, while Wallace continued to do the dishes. Jenn was looking around the kitchen and taking it all in. Modernity housed in age. A beautiful, simplistic thing. She sighed. This was what she wanted. She didn't mind giving part of her life to the church, helping others find their path and keeping them on track, but...she wanted this. She wanted the home, in the suburb, with Whittle. She was just scared to find out if it was something Whittle wanted too. "You guys did a spectacular job," Whittle said, crossing her legs as she sat in her chair, "like, seriously, this place is gorgeous." "Well, we both grew up in cities, and wanted something a little more cozy than that, especially if we wanna have a family at some point," Roger said, cutting some cheese and placing it onto a cracker before eating it and adding, "don't get me wrong, a city can be a great place for a child to grow up too, exposing them to people and viewpoints they might be shielded from elsewhere, but we have a very specific lifestyle in mind." Jenn smiled and nodded, before clearing her throat. "Do you..." she started, "...how did you..." She looked towards Whittle, their eyes meeting, and Jenn got nervous, stopped speaking and excused herself, much to Whittle's confusion. Jenn stepped outside into the backyard and took in a few deep breaths. She wanted her future now, not later. But moving too fast ran the risk of scaring people off, and she didn't want to scare Whittle off. She saw a beautiful rose garden in the backyard, with a koi fountain as a centerpiece, and approached it. She knelt down and dripped her fingertips in the water, giggling as the fish came up and nibbled at them weakly. Whether it was love or it was comfort from religion, she knew the things she wanted...she just didn't know how to get them. Back in the bedroom, Boris, now seated on the bed beside John, looked at his hands in his lap and sighed. "My whole life," Boris said, "I was running away from things that I didn't know how to handle. Only too late before I learned how to deal with them, too late to deal with them, and in the end it feels like because of that, perhaps I haven't lived at all. You're lucky, John, you discovered what you wanted early on and you went for it. It might've been driven by tragedy, but you did the opposite of me, you ran towards it, not away from it. I shielded myself. You opened yourself. That's the inherent difference between us." "That's one inherent difference, certainly, but don't speak on my behalf as if my tragedy was any less traumatic," John retorted, "because, God knows, it wasn't. I lost the man that I loved, and I had nobody to blame but myself for it. Others turn to blame God, I turned to God for forgiveness. I accepted the fault, and asked God to show me how to go on. Does that make me stronger? That's not really for me to say. Others opinions mean more than my own in regards to my actions. I'm the last person who should ever be able to accurately judge the things I do. But it did give me strength, wisdom, perspective. Experience, even if it comes from the worst things, is still experience, and it can be shared to help others." "I wonder what I would've been like," Boris said, "had I given in. Had I...had I not run." John shifted and looked at Boris, confused. Boris sighed and reached up, rubbing his eyes, groaning. "I always knew I wasn't like every other man around me," Boris said, "I always knew that, inside, there were differences. Most of the men I grew up around were tough, were strong, were upfront with their masculinity. I hid mine. I receded into myself because I knew I didn't have the same things they did. I didn't care about sports, I didn't care about sleeping around, I cared about poetry. I cared about..." A moment, Boris paused, and slowly exhaled. "I cared about David Morgan," Boris finished, and this got John's attention. "Who is David Morgan?" John asked. "David Morgan was a boy who grew up a few blocks away from me," Boris said, "we went to the same school, and we became friends. David was also not like your other typical boys, we shared a lot of the same interests, scholarly pursuits, hence why the friendship blossomed as well as it did. We used to ride our bikes to the library and try to find unknown poets, discover new writing together, and sometimes we even wrote poetry together. He liked painting, so I tried my hand at it, and we took painting classes downtown at a local gallery. I was never very good, but David was great. He gave me a painting for my birthday one year, and I still have it. I gave him poetry, and he loved it. It was a friendship built on mutual respect for the arts, and for our differences that set us apart from the others, but gave us hope with eachother." "That's really beautiful, Boris," John said, smiling. "And then David met a woman," Boris said, "our first year of college. He met this woman named Patricia, and she was nice, she was a lovely person. They too shared similar interests. But I...I couldn't bring myself to let anyone else have him, especially not in the ways that we had shared for so long. It felt like being replaced. So I repressed my anger, my resentment, and instead I tried to date as well. It never went very well, but...I tried. But every single time I would be out with some new girl, even if we did get along which we often would at least to some extent or another, the whole time I was thinking to myself 'I could be having this conversation with David'. That scared me. I was from a generation that wasn't supposed to accept that. So I didn't. I kept it away and..." Boris sniffled, tears forming in his eyes, his voice cracking. John reached out and put his hand on Boris's back. "...and after a while, I just sort of managed to ignore it best I could," Boris said, "met my wife, had a child, had a life. An entire life, being someone I wasn't. And I managed to stay that way, that hidden, until I met you. You fucking ruined everything." "My bad," John said playfully, shrugging, both men chuckling. "These men who now own my childhood home together," Boris said, still crying, "they...they probably do realize it, but it's easier for me if I believe that they don't realize how good they have it. How lucky they are to be able to be who they are and do what they do. I wasn't given that option. So I hope they appreciate it, as I'm sure they do. Another time...another place...had we been the same age...this could've been us." John's heart dropped, and he now felt like he wanted to cry too. He knew that in a few short months, maybe less, the man sitting beside him would be dead, and once again, a man he loved would exit his life. John looked down at his shoes and sighed softly, trying not to cry, when he felt Boris take his hand in his own and squeeze it gently, and then John had no chance. The tears came. Quietly, but they came. "In all my years of earnestness, I've been blessed with the ability, to quietly manage to finesse, a sense of true senility. Always acting like a fool, pretend I don't see what is around me, my false dementia is a tool, that continues to ground me. I can live with the acknowledgement that nothing else may be true, but the one thing I have to acknowledge is how I feel for you." John looked up at Boris, who was still looking out at the room. "That was the poem I gave him," Boris said, "and he never gave any inclination that he truly understood the subtext, but I like to think he did. I like to think we both felt the same way, if only because unrequited love is so very tragic. It was his poem, but I'm giving it to you now." Boris finally turned his head and looked at John, the two staring at one another for what felt like minutes. Neither saying a word, both barely breathing, as if to live would ruin the moment. John then hugged Boris tightly, and Boris laughed, hugging him back, patting him on the back. Boris looked around the room while they hugged, and he smiled. His time might be over...but this house still had so much left to see. Meanwhile, out in the garden, Jenn, who was now sitting on the edge of the pond, her fingertips trailing gently at its surface, heard the screen door shut and looked up to see Whittle approaching. Whittle sat down as well and sighed as she finished the last cracker she'd brought with her from the kitchen. "We should probably get going soon," Whittle said, "give these guys their house back for the day." "Would you want this?" Jenn asked, surprising even herself with her sudden question, "...with me?" Whittle smiled and put her hand on Jenn's knee, causing her to blush. "Someday," Whittle said, "that sounds nice. Once Boris is gone, I certainly won't want to live in the apartment anymore, between Chrissy and him, it'll just be full of sad memories. I think I'd like to stay in the city for a while still. But someday, definitely. I'd love to own a home, be able to say I have my own place." Whittle then put her hands on Jenn's shoulders, causing Jenn to look at her. "...and there's nobody else I'd wanna do that with than you," Whittle finished, leaning in and kissing her. Roger and Wallace watched from the windows, smiling to themselves. This house was a safe place, because they'd made it that way, and they were happy to share that safety with those like them who needed it. The world was such a wreck, it only made sense to give comfort where they could to those who required. After all, what even was life without helping others? That's what drove John and Jenn to the church, after all.
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Golden Years follows the exploits of a bunch of old people in a retirement home as they try to have fun, relax or come to terms with the soon to be end of their lives. Archives
April 2024
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