Exit Strategy

         My family was odd in a way that is rather hard to explain.

         It all started with my great grandfather. He was normal enough until he found the one thing that would change my family forever. He found a fountain. Yeah, that fountain.

         Naturally, he shared. I mean, that’s what families do, right?

         Roughly four centuries later, I’m the last one. Immortality is a tricky thing, I’ll tell you. Sickness and old age are taken care of real good, but it’s all a bit vague when it comes down to physical . . . accidents.

         Dad signed off from the ledger of life when he got it into his head that he could hang glide through a hurricane. He was 231 years old.

         My sister made it up to the ripe old age of 300 when she took up the hobby of skateboarding through wild animal stampedes. You can imagine how that ended.

         Grandma set herself on fire just to see if the immortality covered that kind of thing. It didn’t.

         I could see how a person might think my family crazy, but they wouldn’t understand. Life gets a bit dull after you’ve seen so much of it. What was once a tendency towards excitement and thrills shifts to something a tad more dangerous.

         It was my cousin, Mona, who decided to call them exit strategies. By then, half of the family had already “exited”. You can’t possibly imagine how depressing day to day life gets once all your friends have grown old without you. The desire to simply exit the life that refuses to let go becomes strangely appealing.

         However, it was never appealing to me. I have not found my exit strategy, and I do not plan on ever creating one. I am lonely and ancient and sad, but I do not want to let go.

          One day, a box arrives. There is no return address.

         I open it up guardedly. I have lost all my friends centuries ago, and the last of my family exited a couple of decades earlier.

         There is a letter inside. ‘          



Dear Susan,

         I gave this to some lovely boys at my friend, Dale’s, firm downtown. I can’t tell you the kind of looks I got when I asked them to deliver this to this address a few hundred years from now, but they agreed. They think I’m crazy. I almost don’t blame them.

         You don’t know who I am, I think. I’m your great-granddad’s sister, Valerie. I was with him when he discovered you-know-what. I didn’t drink any, seemed terribly unnatural, so now I look forward to a future of aging and death. You may think I am crazy now too, but I am content.

         I’ve been taking care of you for the past few months. You’re just a baby, and your parents needed a sitter while they scamper around studying this whole immortality business. You’re such a little angel. I admit, this is the closest I’ve ever come to drinking any of your great grandpa’s silly elixir. I’d like to get to know you, see you grow. Alas, that will probably not come to pass.

         Are you happy, Susan? I hope so. By now, you’ve lived longer than me by a few centuries. It’s a funny old thing to contemplate. The things you must have seen.

         Now see me rattling off like the absent-minded granny that I am. I just wanted to send you a little something from home, a loving hello from across the decades. You’re always in my thoughts, sweetie.

Love,

Valerie



         Two pictures accompany the letter. There is an old woman in the first photograph. She has pale gray hair and a face full of smiles and wrinkles. She is holding a small baby that is reaching for her ear. I peer closer. The baby is trying to grab a hold of the old woman’s earring.

         The second picture is just of the baby sleeping. The child nestles the same earring in her tiny hands.

         Beneath the letters and the photographs there is something else. I gasp as I see an earring at the bottom of the box. A rush of emotion and memory hit this grown-up baby like a train.

         As I cradle the bejeweled earring in my hand, feeling its slight weight rest with comfortable familiarity, I take out the last item in the box. It is a postcard.

         “Wishing you were here!” is inscribed in friendly block letters across a beautiful sunset overlooking the Santa Cruz, Californian boardwalk. I have not been to my family’s hometown since our last reunion, nearly half a century ago.

         I think about the many years I have lived and about the lonely existence I now call my own. I remember how much better life felt when I was surrounded by family and friends.

         I calculate that I have lived and loved more than two or three lifetimes worth, time well spent. But for the last few decades, I have done nothing but wallow in my own pathetic loneliness, clinging on to a life that should no longer be mine.

         I carefully refold the letter and place the rest of the contents back into the box.

         It’s time to come up with my own exit strategy.

         I hear Tornado Alley is nice this time of year . . .