Nothing More

Edna had become invisible to the world.

To the nurses, she was a chart and a schedule.
To the hallway, she was an object to be rolled around.
To the city beyond the window, she did not exist at all.

An old woman in a wheelchair—nothing more.

Her memories lay inside her like crushed glass. No sharp edges anymore, just dull fragments catching the light at odd angles, refracting moments that no longer belonged to any order. A hand here. A voice there. A color without a name. Each piece once meant everything; now they were debris, shifting when she breathed.

She was fading.

Not all at once, but softly, the way ink disappears in water.

Days no longer announced themselves. Night and morning slid into each other without distinction. Time had given up on her, or perhaps she had simply let go first. She sat where she was placed, eyes open, unfocused, drifting between shallow sleep and something even thinner than waking.

Sometimes a face leaned close and said her name.

“Edna.”

The sound reached her like it had traveled a great distance, distorted and delayed. She would search for the meaning of it, turning it over in her mind like a stone worn smooth by years of handling. It felt important. Once, it had been her. Now it was just a noise that stirred a faint ache.

Henry no longer appeared.

Not in diners.
Not on rainy streets.
Not even as a blur.

The place in her where he had lived was quiet now, emptied out, as if whatever held him there had finally dissolved. The waiting stopped. The counting of cars stopped. Even the longing dulled, retreating into something neutral and gray.

She felt herself thinning.

Her hands rested on her lap, unfamiliar, as if they belonged to someone she had once known. Her body was heavy, but her sense of self was light, loosening, slipping its knots. The effort of remembering—of being—was too much. She no longer tried.

Outside, the city carried on, indifferent and alive. Lights blinked on and off. Cars passed. People went home to dinners and conversations and futures that did not include her. The rain washed the streets clean, erasing footprints as quickly as they were made.

Soon, it would erase her too.

In these last stages, there was no fear left. Fear required clarity, and clarity had abandoned her long ago. What remained was a quiet surrender, a gentle unthreading. The spiderweb of her mind finally tore, strand by strand, until nothing was left to hold her in place.

She was becoming absence.

A breath came in.
A breath went out.

Each one felt optional.

Edna drifted toward the void—not as something dramatic or dark, but as a vast stillness, a place without memory, without pain, without the burden of trying to hold herself together. There were no fields there. No rain. No windows.

Just rest.

And when she was gone, the world barely noticed.

A room would be cleared.
A name crossed off a list.
A chair pushed into a corner.

Like all who came before her, Edna faded quietly, leaving behind only the faintest impression that someone had once sat by a window, watching the rain, trying—until she no longer could—to remember.