When I announced my trip to the Grand Canyon, a few people at the nursing home came to talk to me. Some of them had never really spoken to me before, but now, they looked at me with admiration.
“Mrs. Martha, are you really going on a trip?” a young nurse asked with a bright smile.
“Do you think an old woman like me can’t?” I replied with a grin.
She shook her head. “No, it’s just… most people here accept their fate. They stop dreaming.”
Her words made me pause. How many people in this place had given up on their dreams? How many of them simply lay in their beds, waiting for the end as if they no longer mattered?
I decided I wouldn’t go alone. I would take my new friends with me—the ones who had also been forgotten by their families, the ones who once thought life had nothing left to offer.
I used part of my remaining money to fund a trip for five of us from the nursing home. There was Gladys—my best friend, Eleanor—the one who loved mystery novels, Dotty—who always shared the best homemade cookies, and two elderly gentlemen, Henry and Albert, both retired teachers who hadn’t received a single phone call from their families in three years.
The day we left, the nursing home was livelier than it had been in years. People waved us goodbye, some even shed tears—not out of sadness, but because they realized that old age didn’t have to mean waiting in silence.
We stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, breathing in the crisp air and taking in the sheer vastness of nature. I looked around at my friends—each one of them glowing with a newfound sense of life.
Gladys turned to me, her eyes sparkling. “You know what, Martha? I think this is the first time in years that I actually feel alive.”
I laughed and wrapped an arm around her. “Then let’s keep living, my friend.”
I don’t know how much time I have left, but one thing is for certain—I won’t spend it waiting. I’ll spend it doing.
Because life, no matter your age, is always worth living to the fullest.
