Still Hanging On

Rosa sat quietly in the corner of the common room, her hands folded in her lap, her back stiff with a dignity she still tried to hold on to. The room was too quiet today. The television buzzed faintly in the background, a cooking show she wasn’t watching, just noise to keep the silence from pressing in too hard.

She glanced over at Edna, who was paused by the window at the far end of the hall, her thin hand resting on the glass like she was trying to remember how to pass through it. Rosa watched her a long time. There was something heartbreaking and beautiful in the stillness of it, like a photograph too perfect to touch.

That’s what we are now, Rosa thought. Photos left out in the sun. Fading. Curling at the edges.

She turned her gaze back to her hands. They used to move so quickly—cooking, writing, brushing a daughter’s hair, tying a husband’s tie. Now they just sat there. Waiting. She hated the waiting.

The worst part wasn’t the pain. It wasn’t even the loneliness, not entirely. It was the forgetting.

Sometimes Rosa woke in the night in a panic, convinced she had misplaced something important. A name, a date, a voice. She would lie there trying to remember—just one thing clearly. Her mother’s laughter. The way her father's hand felt on her shoulder. Her child’s first word. But all she could find was fog, thick and unrelenting.

She didn’t talk about it. What would be the point? People would just nod and say they understood. But how could they? How could anyone understand what it feels like to lose yourself piece by piece while your body is still here?

The aides were kind, but too young. They spoke gently, like she might break, and never waited long enough for her thoughts to catch up to their questions. The other residents drifted in and out of coherence—some asleep in their chairs, some repeating stories like broken records stuck in the same groove.

But Rosa noticed Edna. She always noticed Edna.

There was something familiar about her—a quiet resistance, a kind of sadness wrapped in grace. Rosa remembered seeing her once planting something outside, back when they let a few of the residents work in the small garden. A flash of color. Roses, maybe. Or carnations?

She thought of her own garden once, years ago. Tulips, tomatoes, the scent of basil. That was before the world shrank to these rooms, these schedules, this slow waiting for the inevitable fade.

Rosa blinked hard and pushed herself up from the chair with her cane. Her knees ached and her breath came short, but she shuffled slowly toward the hallway. Toward Edna.

As she neared, she could hear Edna’s whisper, so soft it barely reached her:
“Still hanging on…”

Rosa stopped beside her, resting her own gnarled hand on the windowsill.
“Some days,” she said, “that’s all we can do.”

Edna didn’t look at her right away. But she didn’t move away either. And after a moment, her lips curled faintly, almost imperceptibly.

Rosa smiled too, just a little.

Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the thin glass. The lone carnation bent but didn’t break.

In that moment, two women stood side by side in the hallway—not speaking of what was lost, but sharing the silent, sacred truth of what still remained.

Even as the light inside dimmed, they leaned toward it. Toward memory. Toward each other. Toward the last small places where life still bloomed.