Travails at Twilight Years

Nancy’s uncle lay in a hospital bed after a couple of critical days in the ICU, half  the body paralyzed with other complications brought about by unguarded seizures while he was in bed alone in his room in his humble abode.

Ernesto, a 68 years old man has worked hard throughout his life. Since a boy he has worked in the farm amidst the burning heat of the sun and the frigging cold weather.

Getting enough food for the table for his four siblings and mother, since his father left them when they were still young, was a burden thrust on him.

Life has been cruel to him. Though he got married at the age of thirty, he didn’t have enough money to live a comfortable life and to sustain an ambitious and covetous woman, who’s too young to match his age.

Every child birth made life more difficult as he could hardly augment the income. He doubled his efforts in the farm, taking and working on others’ farms just to make both ends meet. He hardly took enough rest. He’d come home late in evenings after an arduous farm work and would get up early to cook for his family before he left for farm again.

Call it over-sacrificing but when his children grew up, only the eldest became a responsible one and he continued to work hard for the other children, trying to give them as much comfort as they wished to.

They neglected the old man when he fell sick. Giving him just the  first-aid and ordinary treatments, he was never taken to a doctor to know what ailment  had truly befallen on him.

Each day in a span of sixty years, he lived a hard, tough and difficult life. Though the eldest offspring  unstintingly supported him and his wife financially, the money was not spent on themselves but was deployed for the rest of his irresponsible and ever dependent married children.  

Despite his getting weaker and sicker, he continued working hard. He had no time to relax as his nagging and pesky wife will never let him. She would hurl invectives at him should he try to rest a bit.

Evidently, his health became poor. He often got sick and even though he has not fully recovered, he would be forced to go back to the farm, if only to provide food for his irresponsible children who were as strong as a bull.

Lying now in a hospital bed, machines attached to his body, you could only cry in silent tears at his plight.

Dreading the inevitable, he knew  he will die a poor man, a life not well-lived but with  only  agonies, pains and tears.

Energy almost depleted, his chance of surviving the acute medical condition is bleak.

Resentment is all Nancy could feel now over the family of his uncle.

Sitting now in the hospital room, with the other family members, Nancy hates to see them shed their crocodile tears. 

Written for Amias' Acrostic Only
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