Exit Plans

By Terry L. White

Will these senior citizens continue to live with loneliness – or find kindred spirits to share their journey? Time and tides, they say, wait for no man; but can the Exit Plans Coalition offer them new options to solve the age old problem of death and dying?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Write Words Inc.
• Release date: May 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781613862827

Book preview

Chapter 1

Henry Barnes pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and edged away from Lolly Parkes, who reeked of a drugstore knockoff of a famous designer fragrance she purchased for $2.98 the day after Henry asked her out for coffee.

A widower since 2002, Henry had recently come to the conclusion his life might be more interesting, possibly more fulfilling, and perhaps even longer if he could find a mature woman who might want to share the rest of his final journey into the great unknown. If she could cook and knew how to do laundry, that would rest heavily in her favor. Who knows, he figured, the way the world was going, a new relationship could be his last chance for happiness in this lifetime. Not that he was in a hurry to kick the bucket; it was just that he didn’t want to go it alone if he didn’t have to.

Henry had been thinking about his own demise a lot lately, and he had secretly come to the conclusion that having a companion for his last earthly journey would be a really good thing. Like many folks his age, he had death on his mind, so a new girlfriend would surely be an affirmation of life and maybe even hold off the Grim Reaper for a while. It was worth a try.

This first date with Lolly, who had been a homemaker throughout a long and fairly dreary marriage, was turning out to be somewhat less than satisfactory, but Henry was a patient man and he figured could afford to get Lolly some better perfume if it looked like the relationship might go anywhere at all. He truly believed a bit of thoughtful courtship could ripen into something much more significant if he could just hang on long enough for his dream girl to show up.

You may wonder what sort of courtship Henry had in mind, but it won’t take a genius to understand that men (and women) of a certain age do tend to seek companionship with others who know the same stories and songs they heard and loved during the middle and latter parts of the 20th century. Love Me Tender was one of the most romantic melodies of their youth. The Beatles were still heroes to what some wet-behind-the-ears young folks called the baby boomers — individuals now dying to get out of their golden years. Conway Twitty still lives on in the failing hearts of his admirers, and in more than a few minds, Johnny Cash rests in the rosewood casket of country song and clings to immortality as the echoes of his earthly ballads are heard again as nostalgic scores for top ten blockbuster movies.

Henry began his courtship of Lolly Parkes with this trip to the closest fast food joint out on the main highway, which byway naturally led to more important parts of the world. It was the sort of fast-food place where senior citizens were given free senior-sized drinks and discounted purchases on the basis of their ability to survive into their various sorts of golden years.

This seemed like good business at the time, but if the truth be told, it was becoming an a bad idea as hordes of newly retired old folks stopped in to claim this stingy but well-intended bounty of cheap foods and drink that were not really good for them in the first place.

Golden Agers, after all, were getting to be a majority in the world and courting their business made sense at one time, but lately this sort of generosity had grown to be less than cost-effective. If a senior citizen was going to go out for coffee, he or she looked for a good price and free beverage refills. If the place put self-serve drink machines off to the side of the sales counter, then so much the better, because there was then no need to leave a tip — and you could pour your own refills and even take a full drink home with you on your way out of the place.

Still, the time when senior citizen benefits had to be scrapped had not yet arrived in Rockpoint, and so Henry and Lolly sat in a booth with a clear view of Henry’s fire-engine-red pickup so that he could keep an eye on the vehicle in case a thief happened by to make off with his shiny crimson chariot.

You never knew who to trust, he thought, and on the basis of that thought, kept his almost new (and very likely his very last) vehicle in plain sight whenever he parked at his favorite eatery on the four-lane highway to Ocean City and points south.

Lolly wasn’t sure she admired Henry’s truck as much as he did because she had a devil of a time getting into the thing. There was quite a step from the ground up to the front seat. On the other hand, she did not dream of complaining.

First dates — or any dates for that matter — just weren’t that easy to come by at her time of life.

Hasn’t the weather been nice? Henry offered after a long silence generated by trying to find something to say. He stirred several packets of real sugar into a senior coffee refill. The brew was weak and tasted like it had been sitting on the warmer way too long, but you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and the price was right — only 29 cents if you didn’t purchase another non-coffee menu item at full price, and then it was free! He looked at the electrified menu on the wall above the cash register and weighed the purchase of a breakfast sandwich against the merits of the sausage and pancakes special. His gaze lingered on the dollar menu.

Henry, like many individuals in his retirement years, hoped his date wouldn’t order one of the more expensive items on the menu. His finances weren’t what they used to be, that was for sure. Just in case, he thought he would order something from the dollar menu in an effort to prompt his date to do the same.

Lottie scowled. It’s pretty hot out for me, she said at last and dumped the contents of several pink envelopes of sweetener into her cup and wished there had been sugar-free hot chocolate on the menu. Chocolate always made her feel better, but her diabetes was acting up and she didn’t dare even think of using real sugar or eating even one bite of chocolate these days. Everything had to be sugar-free despite all the bad press artificial sweeteners were getting on the doctor shows she watched each afternoon after her nap. She sipped her chemically tainted brew and tried to think of something witty to say.

There was a time when her pretty hair and a worshipful smile might have captivated any man she chose, but lately gravity and age had worked their tiresome spell and left her quite alone in the world while she waited for the yard man to come by and cut the grass.

She had been beside herself with delight when Henry called and asked her out to breakfast, but now she sat quite bewildered by the reality of the whole thing and pretty much at a loss of what to say next.

* * *

Fast-food joints that focused largely on teens and young families for their profits hardly seemed like the preferred setting for meeting people, but time and fixed incomes had rendered the Burger-Ama and other such drive-ins along the corridor to Ocean City popular with the silver-hair set as will immediately become apparent. A couple of booths down from our dating friends, Art Nelson and Sewell Haynes doctored their senior cups with calorie-saving artificial sweeteners and much despised chemical-blend lighteners and discussed a plan to go fishing the next day.

Their conversation was lively and revolved about who would pick up the bloodworms, and which one of them would make the liverwurst sandwiches — these with or without onions.

Art said he would bring the beer. Sewell shuddered at the thought. He favored Miller or Bud, good, reliable, masculine beers, while his fishing buddy enjoyed weird designer brews flavored with lavender and pumpkin. To each his own, but who wanted a liquid that tasted like perfume when it was 95 degrees and 99 percent humid out there on the Choptank River?

Mildred Shaw, Penny Gray, and Louise Donner sipped their senior-sized teas (a free refill consisted of a pot of hot water — but no new tea bag — and took turns discussing their various and sometimes mutual health problems.

Mildred had a sagging bladder that kept her running to the john every few minutes and secretly wearing adult diapers in social situations.

Penny Gray had developed arthritis and her poor hands were so twisted and painful she could hardly sort out the quarter she liked to leave the girl who swept under the tables for her trouble. (No one knew it at that moment, but Penny was about to be informed of even worse complications in her sad life’s journey.)

Louise was an artist, and she rarely appeared without splatters and splashes of paint on her tie-dyed clothing and in her long, uncombed hippie hair. She wore a cascade of silver bracelets that remained in place day and night, thus carrying music with her wherever she happened to go.

Louise freely admitted she used pot, but no one really got bent over it, she was so nice and all. Pretty much everyone in her age group had heard of weed during the 1960s and 1970s. Most of these people declared they had never inhaled, but some most assuredly had. If you followed the news at all, it looked like the government was going to make pot legal soon, so it was not a big deal.

These coffee-centric gatherings of old folks were historically repeated several times a week for lack of anything better to do, and it wasn’t long until the various players in this new stage of life started to get to know one another. Art Nelson found out that he and Sewell had both worked for the city, albeit in different departments. Their mutual paths must have crossed, but neither could recall when or how.

Art toiled on the city roads and spent more than one summer tamping down hot-top on the miles and miles of city streets. During the winters he pushed snow around until the greenhouse effect cancelled the season. Retirement had come as a relief because there wasn’t much to do at work any longer — unless he wanted to try to get on the trash detail and wait out his full Social Security at age 67 picking up stinky things and pitching them into the compactor truck.

Sewell, who dated but, never married, worked at the wastewater treatment plant and had long since lost his sense of smell to what some saw as a misguided sense of duty. It was the only job he had ever had in his long and tedious life, so where else to place his loyalty?

Sewell had looked forward to his retirement and remembered his days on the water department crew as lively — if tiring toward the end. The city employees gave him a party in honor of his many years of service during which he was feted with a big cake and a couple of novelty gifts like the back scratcher from the office girls, and a slightly used girlie magazine from the guys in the garage.

Looking back, Sewell remembered that every day was different at the Rockpoint city water treatment department, but one does not see how he came to that conclusion. Like they say, you get so you can’t remember the really awful stuff in your life.

Lolly Parkes looked across the aisle and remembered that Mildred Shaw had once worked in the same dress shop where her own mother shopped for fashionable garb during the long-gone good old days. Lolly had been just about to graduate high school when their paths crossed and Mildred had just turned 20, so they had nurtured a nodding acquaintance in all the years that followed. The dress shop had faded away when the strip malls popped up on the main highway, but the name of the store was still often mentioned by natives who abhorred the box stores out on the main drag that offered uni-sex/uni-sized clothing that fit nearly everyone poorly.

Mildred yearned for the Elite Femme Shop, where her purchases, using a generous employee discount and sales commission, had been tailored to fit her body perfectly — and to camouflage her problem areas. She mourned the generations of young women to come who would have to deal with cookie-cutter fashions and indestructible polyester outfits with elastic waists. She always said if she was forced to wear polyester clothing, she might as well just go ahead and die.

Lolly, who had experienced and shunned the benefits of elastic years before, yearned for the more fashionable garb no longer available to women of a certain age and conformation, but like some of her sisters in the current demographic, she had resisted her personal surrender to sweats and polyester pant suits. Lolly haunted the local thrift shops, ferreting out ensembles in natural fabrics and with designer labels, thus cementing her reputation as a hot mama among the other females of her generation.

You can buy something at a thrift store, she often said. But who is to say you didn’t buy it brand new once it hangs in your closet for a while? People will just think you have good taste.

We ought to have an old folks club, Henry said to Lolly, more for something to say than from a conviction that he might actually like to see any of these ill-assorted old folks on anything like a regular basis. Besides, he knew he could talk about his ailments if it came to that. It was, he reflected, one of the perks of getting old. Besides, who could plan for the future at their advanced age? Deciding what to have for supper was about all the future any one