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“No one is different when they get older,” she said with irritation. “If you’re old and crotchety, you were young and crotchety. If you’re a pleasant old person, you were probably pleasant as a young person also.”

She adjusted in her seat.

“We’re the same inside even though our bodies are,” she looked for a word, “rotting.”

“Why do we say that? Why do we always assume that older people have to be crabby or sweet?”

“Stupid idea! Came from giving allowances to nasty people to be vile, as if their age gave them absolution and dispensation.”

Excerpt from Caring for Eleanor

But the defeated wife never communicated what she really wanted to say. Decorum dictated it, rotting tradition and decent human intercourse dictated politeness not avarice. Telling him that she supported him during his time of need, where now it was fair share, was out of the question. Tears of outraged vanity blurred her vision. The wild whirl of nameless regret and passionate sorrow overwhelmed her as she felt like a ruined broken wreck.

Excerpt: Caring for Eleanor

On the armchair lay an old doily that she fiddled with as she spoke. “I remember the day clearly, the day I stopped caring what Joseph thought. It was such freedom, such a marked day for me. I realized that I didn’t need to explain myself to him, didn’t need him to understand how he wronged me.”

She stopped to give her next words some thought, “When the day comes,” said Eleanor, clear and succinct, “that you do not care what someone thinks of you, that is the day you’re free of them.”

Eleanor in Caring for Eleanor

“There are many way to hit someone,” said Eleanor with the wisdom of age. “Some people do it with fists, others do it with words.”

Caring for Eleanor