Hello George and Ann, I am George in his sixties, I am addressing you who are twenty-five years old and recently married.
I remember you with affection and nostalgia, full of positive energy, optimism and the will to live; you both work hard but you also enjoy the weekends, sometimes going on a trip to the mountains that you both love, sometimes visiting your parents, your Jordi or your Anna, you share and get along well with everyone. You also have a good relationship with each other’s siblings, you meet sometimes and have a good time. You bought yourself a fantastic bike, a 750cc BMW that you ride on.
You live in a good neighborhood in a city as beautiful as the Barcelona of the 80s. George, you really enjoy running even though you’ve never had the conditions, Ann, you’re a “crack” (a common word now in the 21st century, it means you are very good at something) at work, worth two or three! And don’t think about children for now, you’re fine like this.And you are satisfied with your small one-room apartment, with a scant 40m². You don’t need more. But you both have aspirations, you like big houses, tastefully decorated, located in nice places. And one day you are sure you will have it.
Nothing remains of all that from where I am writing to you, in a place in your future.
Here your parents died a long time ago victims of serious illnesses, your father, George, suffered a lot but only for a few weeks, on the other hand Ann’s parents suffered from Alzheimer’s and the last few years they don’t even know you, it was hard.
In this present you live in a big apartment too crammed with things that you haven’t thrown away because of that grasping feeling you’ve always had, there are so many things that it’s impossible to keep order and even clean well. Piles of clothes you don’t use in wardrobes and bags, piles of old books you’ll never read again, piles of memories in drawers, boxes and shelves gathering dust. As much as you loved beautiful houses with modern and elegant decor, you had to settle for simple and worn furniture, which you can’t renovate because you’re tight on money.
Yes George, you have not achieved financial comfort after so many years of work, on the contrary, you have been doing well for many years, and now that retirement is approaching, you are seeing them come even thinner. Well, the area where you live is not bad, but it is not in your beloved and longed for Barcelona, you had to emigrate to the South for work reasons and could not return. You often say you want to come back one day to walk around Barcelona, but you’ve been saying that for years.
George, you have had to stop running due to injuries and joint pain, but you can still go for walks, although not on the mountain as you liked because your knees do not tolerate it well. Your health was perfect but now you have several chronic conditions: you can’t see well up close, you can’t feel well, your bowels need frequent laxatives, everything hurts when you get out of bed, you’ve lost a tooth due to decay and you’re left over of weight which has caused you to have fatty liver with cysts but you are throwing up.
But you Ann have had worse luck with your health. Perhaps due to the stress of the mental ferment of your parents, both at the same time, your health deteriorated further. First you developed high blood pressure, then psoriasis, which started only at the level of the epidermis but then deepened at the joint level, with the danger of going deeper into vital organs. And finally the cancer came, and at the worst time. George and Ann, around 2020 the world suffered a virus pandemic that threatened all of humanity; much of it had to be confined at home to avoid contagion. Yes couple, like in dystopian science fiction movies. During the confinement, medical consultations were drastically reduced, doctors were also confined and emergency rooms were overflowing with the infected. And it was just then that you had abnormal vaginal discharge, in full climacteric. When the pandemic passed and everything returned to normal, you were diagnosed with a very aggressive carcinoma that was already metastasizing. It’s been three years and you’re still alive, but with two rescue operations, two rounds of chemotherapy and one of radiotherapy, which have left you very damaged. That’s why you don’t go for walks in Barcelona, in fact you rarely leave the house. And you’re not out of danger yet. You stopped working a long time ago, and that’s why you’re very tight on money; in addition you will not be entitled to any retirement pension and you will have an even fairer old age. You will also not be entitled to any help because George will have a pension and the state considers this to be sufficient.
Right now Ann and George I am writing to you on a Sunday at 11:00. The house is quiet because you, Ann, always sleep very badly at night and in the mornings you often end up sleeping until 2:00 p.m., so I am alone and quiet all morning so as not to disturb you. A while ago I was sorting through a pile of cooking recipes accumulated over twenty years by you Ann, you had loose sheets on a chair, not stapled or put in folders, I took it upon myself to punch them and sort them into a folder of rings You will probably never look at them but at least now they will be classified, and so I do something.
Ah, important! You had one child Ann and George, an only child. You George wanted two, but Ann refused a second pregnancy. He is now thirty years old and still lives with you, and he has no intention of leaving! He had two emotional disappointments and no longer wants to try his luck again. In fact he has become a misogynist. He is also not very hardworking, and this living independently as it is expensive he does not want to do it, we must have taken care of Ann too well and now this is happening. I feel sorry for him but no matter how much I try to get him to change his attitude, he doesn’t listen to me. He will end up being a forty man living with two elderly people, which is a sad scenario. You are alone with him, because you haven’t spoken to your siblings in years, another thing that has been lost along the way, like the friendships of your youth, which you did not nurture and maintain. You only have neighbors in the community, good people, but nothing to do with a good friend and a loving family.
In short, Ann and George, life has not been as you imagined it would be, and as you deserved. Not at all.
But you still hold the most valuable thing of all that you have: your love for each other, which has varied over time but remains strong. You have had strong disagreements, strong arguments, you were even separated for a short space of time because you George were weak and flirted with others, when Ann most needed you to be strong. But you got back together. And you have been there for almost forty years. You got it right, you were made for each other. George, I recommend that you take advantage of every moment with Ann, I don’t know if the George who is writing to you has much more time left to do it.
Kissing couple
the closed room 