At her bedside, they hover and buzz and shake their heads. “She never speaks,” they say. “Poor thing! It's depression, of course. Ninety and bed-ridden, arthritis in every joint – who wouldn't be depressed?” But they're wrong. She doesn't speak because she knows they think her too old to have anything to say. They talk over her, past her, as if she were not there at all, so she utters not one word in return. She doesn't speak because, in her private, silent reveries, she's busy unfolding again the truly golden years of her life.
In her silence, she's back in her childhood home, in the small living room with her parents and siblings, grouped before the handsome Stomberg-Carlson radio, listening to One Man's Family, and hearing wise old Father Barbour's unfailing response of “yes, yes” when one or another of his offspring asks, “What do you think, Father Barbour?” She stays tuned to hear the honking of Mr. First-Nighter's taxi, and anticipates as before the story that Les Tremain and Barbara Lutty act out.
She wills herself back to the movies of a Saturday afternoon, when for the admission price of eleven cents, she sees a feature, a serial, and a newsreel. Through closed eyes, she watches the Pathé camera execute its turn from side view to squarely in the face of the audience.
Excited as ever she used to be, in the bleachers with her friends, she lives again a Friday afternoon after-school football game. They stand and sing together the National Anthem, and then their Alma Mater. Sense of pride and belonging fills her, and for one brief instant, a sharp yearning for what is lost interrupts her reverie.
The fantasies she treasures most put her again in the early years of her motherhood, with her little ones – at lunchtime, perhaps, or at bath time – the splashing, the laughing, the tears that shampooing invariably produced. She's right there, reading to them once more, listening to them as they play, as they quarrel, as they tell her their woes, their triumphs. The fantasies of newlywed days are next-best, or maybe her husband's and her time together after the family has been raised and sent out into the world to live their own lives and to occasionally return to visit with precious grandchildren in tow. Too cruel to relive, though, are the days of his illness and dying, for these commence the tarnished years and all the insensitivity that goes with them.
So they talk of depression, do they? She could tell them plenty about depression. But then, she's not speaking. She's too involved with happier days.