How sick, I didn’t know yet. Maybe I didn’t want to. At seventy-five, I could still choose treatment options, or I might be reverting to my dramatic ways and it was only an ulcer. I wondered if other older women felt this way—trapped in an aging body yet stuck with a mind still full of possibilities. It was a bitter contradiction. But what really made me grieve was the lack of people with whom I could truly discuss this phenomenon.

Most of my friends didn’t like lapsing into philosophical discussions of death—of either the body or the mind or the younger self. They were content with chatting about ailments and medicine and faith-inspired images of heaven, sort of like the Rainbow Bridge for animals. And though I personally couldn’t wait to greet my beagle, Bagel, or my husband, whom I missed with every breath, I wasn’t ready to test the theory.

No, I liked Earth here just fine.

Especially with the work that still had to be done.

I glanced at my iPhone, still wishing for the old-fashioned phones with real buttons to press and the inability to text a few words to anyone in the world, who could make any inference they wished because they couldn’t hear the inflection in your voice. The warm April weather was a gift in a season when Mother Nature usually had PMS and couldn’t decide whether to whack us with snow, rain, or an eighty-degree day. I needed to think about things and figure out what I was going to do. Best to go to the garden, where I could do useful work at the same time.

I took my time, putting on the red floral apron I liked to use because it had four pockets and snapped easily in the front. My wide-brimmed straw hat hung from the peg at the back door. I filled up my water bottle and walked through the small, sunny yellow kitchen and out the screen door that squeaked when it shut. A covered box I kept on a bench held my dirt-encrusted tools, with rubber handles and wide grips. I found that after a few hours, my hands cramped from my arthritis and my tangled fingers bent oddly at the knuckles, giving me a shiver of horror when I glanced down or studied them. Sometimes, pieces of my body seemed not to belong to me any longer, as if they’d suddenly appeared on me, kidnapping my normal appendages for ransom. The worst was when I took a shower and caught a glance of myself naked. I’d stand and look at my flabby flesh, which had once been firm and golden, distaste in my gaze as I took in my sagging breasts and soft, wrinkled stomach. I used to pride myself on keeping trim, painting my toes, and shaving every day, but after Jack passed, it seemed less important.