It is not death that brings on judgement day, it is age. Age, the years lived or not, the lies told to ourselves and others. Age sat him down in a room of excuses made while they whispered in his ears. They were ghosts from his past, most forgotten. But age had not forgotten.

Age was judge and jury and every day in that house was another day in prison, another whisper in the room, another problem to be solved. His age sat silently making notes. It didn’t matter that he screamed “I DIDN’T KNOW!” Age would look up and past him and then down at his life’s ledger.

There was nothing to do with age or with anything. Age was reality. There was only reality and there was no escape but one. He looked around at others that had outlived their age: afraid of dying, not aware that it was age that was their enemy, not death.

He was not going to let age win. He was not going to accept its forgone conclusions. Age was an option, he remembered, and it was himself that gave it the power it had.