By Carol Blatter

Carol described this as a “runaway story, or collage essay”–in other words an essay in which one thought prompts the next, the writer following in wonder at where the mind goes.

This huge truck, the longest truck I had ever remembered seeing in months, maybe years, pulled up next to our home. But, it did not come onto our driveway, that would have been a disaster, the truck was much too long to fit. On it was a mega-sized picture of an animal that after eating papers, the remains were flying all over, fitting for a shredding destruction mobile service.  Four boxes of clinical counseling charts and two boxes of miscellaneous house files, like old tax and medical records, were emptied and fed into the shredding machine. Remember when I was first licensed as a clinical social worker? Remember when I started seeing people? A long time ago.  

Anyway, about the boxes, clinical charts went through the machine, charts of individuals and families, poof, all gone, like death to people. Proof I was no longer a clinician. And death is getting closer, I lost two friends over a few months, poof, they were gone before they told me they were leaving. They just got up and left. I’m at the age when people, without my permission, leave. They die. Just like that, they leave. They die. And I’ll leave, too, I’ll die, and I won’t have any say in when it will happen. 

I was going to be an actress. That’s what I thought when I was a kid, after taking lessons for years, you know the kind that prepares you for the theater, acting, voice and diction, and dancing to help you move on stage, no klutzes, only actors who learned to move with grace and dignity. Grace and dignity, I can’t say that was me during those years, I was still a klutz, dancing helped, but not too much, I was who I was. Imagine I got here eighty-three years ago. My parents decided I had no say in entering life, and I’ll have no say in leaving it. Loss of control. I can’t control anything. Even getting up in the morning is beyond my control; it just happens. So I say a prayer thanking God for getting me up. 

Does God plan it, or is it dumb luck that I get up and even make it through the day? Carol died, not me, another Carol, she was sick. Colon cancer. She left behind two adult children, a third who disappeared and was never found, and five grandchildren. Fran died; she wasn’t sick, at least they didn’t think she was sick. She recovered from a hospital stay with pneumonia and was well, so she and her husband thought. Off to Florida for vacation, and in the wee hours one morning, she lay on the couch, her husband found her, and she expired. She left behind two adult children, they’re married and have children, yes, she had five grandchildren. I miss my friends. No one to call, chat, and share what’s happening in our lives. 

And the people I helped, I wonder what happened to them. Maybe they like themselves better. Maybe they like their spouses better. Maybe their kids are doing better. Less arguments. Less tumult. Less misery. What if things didn’t get better? I would feel sad. Many times I feel sad, and I don’t know why. Maybe getting older is scaring me and making me feel sad. Death may come at any time, and I will be taken. That’s scary. I’ll leave my husband, our daughter, our son-in-law, and our granddaughter behind. That’s our family, we’re small. I never wanted many children; one was enough. I never really liked kids, yes, I was a babysitter for many years, and I had to like kids then, and I needed the money for clothes so I saved my money from babysitting.

My parents are dead, my dad died of lung cancer at the young age of fifty-six, my mom died of atherosclerosis, plaque build up in the arteries of the heart, at age seventy-five and a half. Forty years ago, she died. Had her first heart attack at age forty-two, I was ten years old. I was scared she would die. I’ve outlived my parents, but outliving dad wasn’t difficult; he was so young when he died, and that’s because he was a smoker. If he hadn’t smoked or stopped years before, he would have lived into old age like others in his family. Never much of an earner. Never much of a Dad. Never had time or knew how to be a Dad. 

I am in good health with one exception. I’ve lost height, which I couldn’t afford to lose. I was always petite at 4’9″, and now I’m three inches shorter due to the fracture of vertebrae in my spine last year. I’m ashamed of the changes in my body. My breasts, diaphragm, and abdomen are all squished together. It’s hard to feel feminine. 

I don’t want to die. I want time with our granddaughter. She lives with her parents near DC, in MD. They make two visits to us a year. I’m tired of goodbyes. It’s because I’m old I have to say many goodbyes. To people. To my career. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die;. . .” Thankfully, I am still here. 

© 2026 Carol J. Wechsler Blatter

Carol J. Wechsler Blatter has contributed writings to Chaleur Press, Story Circle Network Journal, Story Circle Network Anthologies, Writing it Real anthologies, Jewish Literary Journal, Jewish Writing Project, New Millennium Writings, 101.org, and poems to Story Circle Network’s Real Women Write and Covenant of the Generations by Women of Reform Judaism. She is a wife, mother, and a very proud grandmother, and a recently retired psychotherapist in private practice.