He was back home and glad to be there.
He had spent yet another stint in hospital. His daughter would come by soon to see how he was doing. He looked around his tiny living room, thinking about how much nicer it was than the clinical environment of the ward he’d been in. Here he had all his personal things, pictures, photos, bits and pieces. So many of them held bad memories. All in all, he’d lived a sad life. The old man thought about all of the things that had gone wrong in his life. Looking back, he had been the one that had done what he did, but in truth, he’d had a lot of bad breaks. The bad marriage and the workplace accident were prominent among them, but there seemed to be so many!
He was shaken out of these thoughts by the sound of the front door opening. She came in, and after a brief kiss on his head she sat across from him. She asked if he had all of the medications he’d been sent home with. He pointed to the sideboard. She got up and went over to the cluster of containers. She stood reading the labels. She shook a large bottle, noting that it was nearly empty.
She sat back down with it, saying, “These are analgesics, they are painkillers.” She looked at him questioningly and said, “I thought you said that the pains you had were all gone now.” She rattled the bottle again.
“Yes. I know,” he said. “I’m taking them for my memories.”