"Will you please stop saying that!?"(Kevin Hughes) Author's Note: This story is "Fiction" in only in the names of the characters. Most of the content is from Real Life...including mine.

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The old man smiled at her. She was so young. Fifty years old…maybe. Give or take a year or two. Youngsters like that don’t realize they are still in their prime.

He sighed.

“Martha, please, I am begging you (my eyes twinkled a bit…I don’t beg…that manipulation was lost to me decades ago) will you please stop saying I have plenty to live for. I do not. You think I do. So please, I am not going to hurt myself, nor am I going to try and suicide my way out of here. I enjoy each day I have, but I don’t want another one…that’s all. I am not mentally ill, unstable …or depressed. I am simply OLD.”

I guess the OLD part came out a little stronger than I expected…but still it is the truth.”

“But you don’t want to live!”

I stared hard at her.

“I never said that. I said: “I want to die.” Those are two different things.”

She plopped down on the edge of my couch.

“I just don’t understand. You are healthy, well read, an engaging human being to speak with. You have so much to share…to give…why do you want to die?”

I smiled again. Youth thinks it has all the answers. I pointed to my record collection. Small, but truly the best albums ever put out in several genres. Rock, Classic, Jazz, Ballads of all sorts. I even wrote a column for a Jazz Magazine for a couple decades in my youth. I knew music. Not the stuff they put out now…which is mostly crap. Even the ones who can sing, carry a tune, or play an instrument, have to clutter their performances with visual displays to distract you from the autotune, or lip-syncing they do at live shows.

Not even an Professional Dancer could do those kinds of moves and still have the breath to sing a song. Or even hold a note. And the outfits scream: “Look at me I am SEXY!” How are you supposed to relate to the lyrics of sadness, loss, or mistaken choices, when the stage is screaming the exact opposite? It just chafes me to the bone. Oh, dear, I wandered off…I was pointing to my record collection.

Martha glanced over at where I was pointing.

“Oh, those…my first husband had a few of those, but I don’t have a record player…so why are you pointing to them?”

“To prove a point. I only have a record player (Pointing once again, this time at the turntable and Morantz Sound System that was once the pinnacle of vinyl playback) and those speakers. (The speakers were the size of a five year old child…and just as noisy.) You stopped listening to those kinds of records when you were ten! I am still listening to them now.

Go ahead, pick any album, look at the cover, tell me if you know what Band, Artist, or Group made the Album.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“You know I don’t know any of them. In fact, I only know the word “Beatles” never heard any of their music except in movies or commercials. Rosemary Clooney I only know because she was an Aunt or something of George Clooney the Actor, and to tell the truth, he is not really on my radar.”

I smiled again.

“Exactly. My music is still around, most of the folks that made it…are gone. Dead. Same with the Movies and Shows I watched. Heck you were just telling me the other day that you tried to watch “Friends” and “Cheers” on TV, and you couldn’t believe how out of date they were. Cheers went off the Air in 1982, after almost a decade. You would have been ten years old. Even “Friends” has been off the air for almost two decades. And you never saw Carson, or MASH, and even Leno and Letterman were “old school’’ for you.

“So what? That was when there were just a few channels and no cable…and definitely no streaming. “

“Exactly, I was the age you are now, when “Cheers” first started. So I didn’t watch it much. Never saw “Friends” and have no idea why “Seinfeld” was so popular. I still have a landline (pointing to my desk)…and a flip phone (which I keep in a drawer on my desk)…I don’t need the technology you do. I have a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering…so don’t tell me I am some kind of Luddite. I just fail to see the need to stay in virtual contact all day and have opinions of every subject that comes up…even if I don’t know what I am talking about.

Can’t you see that the world has passed me by. Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to live like you? I talk to my friends…I don’t text them. Sure it is faster…but there isn’t any real contact. I might have to listen to Becky tell me about her aches and pains…but I listen. And I can see it helps to have someone to talk to.

But Becky is only seventy five! Almost twenty years behind me. How much do you hang out with your twenty five year old Nieces and Nephews?”

This time it was Martha who looked abashed.

“I don’t. Well except for Family stuff, you know Weddings, Funerals, Christmas…stuff like that.”

I nodded sagely.

“Yeah, I understand. There world, music, books and ways of interacting…aren’t your ways, music, or books. And they are only a generation behind you. I have to deal with two, three, and sometimes four generations removed from mine. It isn’t easy. TV’s in Restaurants? Are you kidding me? Where’s the conversation? Everyone is on their Phone. People have the attention span of a tweet, or twit, or whatever and Tik Tok is ten seconds of mindless drivel…which millions of people check hundreds of times a day to see kids flip water bottles, change clothes really fast, or do something stupid, dangerous, or both.

Why would I watch that? Kittens are cute, but not enough for me to watch someone else’s kitten do something cute…for hours. I have friends that literally binge watched shows on Netflix for the entire weekend…and went back to work exhausted. I don’t live like that. I don’t want to live like that. And folks who do, find they have little in common with me.

I am not lonely. I am simply alone. I am ready to just go. If I wake up…well, who really cares? Sure, you will miss me for a bit. Probably go home to your Hubby and say: “Mr. Wilson died today. I am going to miss him. And you might. But then your husband will say:

“Oh, that’s to bad. You really liked him. What’s for supper?”

Am I right?”

She nodded again. This time a bit more slowly.

I have watched everyone I know die. Everyone. Right down to the woman who stayed by my side for fifty six years. We only had one son, and he died when he was sixty seven years old. His only son died of a heart attack at forty. All my Uncles, Aunts, Siblings, and friends from Grade School….all gone. And you want me to keep living…why?”

I could see the reality was starting to seep into her young brain. She fell for all the Marketing about how Sixty is the new forty, and fifty is the new thirty. No it isn’t. Age takes a toll, history moves on, and the days in front of you hold less interest than the days behind you do. Sure some folks are fully engaged in life at ninety, and running marathons at seventy five, but that isn’t most of us.

I am tired. That’s all. I lived a good life, in some ways, a remarkable life…and I am ready to let go. Maybe, if you live as long as I have…you will understand.

Until then, please do me a favor and quit saying: “ you have a lot to live for.”

"Will you please stop saying that?”

She nodded. It would be a week until she came to check up on me and do the housekeeping chores I can’t do anymore. If I am still here…I will make her some coffee while she tidies up and puts my groceries away. I will be glad I am still able to live independently. And …if I am lucky…she will ask to hear some of my old Albums.

I know she loved the song “Ode to Billy Joe” about Billy Jo Mcallister jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge. She thought that Bobbie Gentry made it into a story song. So maybe I can get her to listen to Patsy Cline next…or Etta May. That would be nice. Maybe we will talk about my old Army Unit…or, she will tell me about the latest SuperStar angry tweets. And that will be my day …that day.

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