You’re sitting in your favorite chair looking at an old photo album. As you look through your memories of 50 years past, all of a sudden you notice that all of the family members you knew as a child, are dead. They’re not here anymore. A deep sadness fills you and you cry some as you go back to that time when you thought they were old but they were the age you are now. Something cuts you inside.

"I'm not old. I'm too young at heart to be old. How come I thought they were old in these photos?"

A few more tears fall down as you begin to realize that your time is shortening in your own life. You know years are numbered. The feeling grabs your gut and squeezes it like it was in a vice, and then that feeling steals your breath away for a while.

You sit in your mama’s old rocker to gain some composer and you think what of what you’re going to do to make your mark in your life… to leave something of yourself behind so you’re not forgotten. You have no idea what the hell you want to do. You’re seventy-one.

You think to yourself that if you’re lucky and in good health, you may have another ten good years to do something until you’re in your eighties.

“Oh my God. In ten years, I’ll be in my eighties.  But I feel good. I still look okay. Not too wrinkly, and even if I was, I’m in my 70’s. What do people expect? People are wrinkled when they’re going to be rounding 80.”

So, you think as you sit and rock. “I’ll write a book. That’s not tiresome and it would keep my mind busy.”

You pick up the photo album and go and make dinner.

Life goes on and you write stories.

Ten years go by. 

You have twenty books to your name and your grandchildren and great grandchildren think you're the coolest person ever. You're a little frailer than you were ten years before, but your muse has stayed with you for a decade. You completed what you set out to achieve.

In the end you think your life was amazing. You achieved what you wanted... to write fiction... which is...Just a little piece of Heaven.