Tom (past fifty)

Fifty on your own(short story)

Tom had had such a busy career.
It wasn´t like he regreted his life, Tom loved the time he use to put into his job. But the one thing he always wanted was a woman in his life.
Unfortunately getting dates didn´t come easy and maintaining a relationship for more than three months was even harder. But now Tom was fifty years old and it was as if he´d just woken up to the fact he was completely alone. All the money he´d saved and all the work he´d done really accounted for very little.
The shock of realizing such lonliness had been making him vomit each morning before work.

So Tom went about his buisiness as usual and tried to ignore the fact that he would probably live his older years without a family or even offspring.
It seemed almost impossible(to find someone) after a month he forced himself into all sorts of awkward predicaments that ended in him being completely humiliated by the potential mate.
Nights disturbed him even more.
As Tom realized how really alone he had become, he rang one of his treasured ex girlfriends that would still talk to him and tried to convince her to go out one night. Though she had already started a really great relationship with a man who had twice the patience he had had and seemed to get along better with her in almost every sense. Tom´s ex girlfriend had never been more happy in her life, Tom felt a little happy that atleast she had figured things out and found someone great. He felt good for her. He was afterall a very caring man even if he was impatient often doing favours for other people even when he knew it wouldn´t benefit him very much.

Tom started taking medication so that he might sleep better, it did make a huge a difference, he seemed to be even more efficient in his job. Tom even started a fling with a woman called Elizabeth who was much younger. But every time he advanced to make it more serious she would back away in horror. Each time she did that, it troubled him so much so that after a few months he left her. Even though Elizabeth cried and rang him asking him to reconsider, Tom knew he was not essential in her life but some sort of convenient love Elizabeth fooled herself into thinking was significant.

Tom started drinking again like he did in his forties and feeling sorry for himself, he still managed to hold down his job even as he was nearing his sixties, as he neared retirement he started to join clubs where he would meet other mature adults. He meet a women there his age Nancy and they hit it off.
Tom loved to play cards with her and their newly found friends at the club where they went. Tom went off the meds and found himself able to perform on autopilot at work and come home to Nancy full of energy and inspired at night, they spent one glorious month together really connecting and Tom just couldn´t empty his head of all the things he wanted to do with nancy.
He even thought of resigning so they could travel together. The second month of their relationship started and Tom thought about asking for her hand. Even though they were now in their late fiftes he was totally convinced.

Nancy responded in her mind "Yes", she had already imagined Tom proposing and felt just as passionate about their relationship as tom did, though later on the same day Tom would propose, Nancy had had an accident! She was halfway between the gutter and the sidewalk semiconscious after tripping on the gutter and having her legs runover by a car. She bled to death there. The worst thing was the driver hadn´t even noticed he had run her down and crushed her legs. The accident happened when Nancy slipped and slid unknowingly into a blindspot between the reversing car and a parked one, it must have been precisely by fate. And as her lungs searched for air to scream her stomach hit the curb. There would be no wedding and Tom would suffer bitterly.

As Tom went into his sixties grief stricken, depression rained down on him. He couldn´t stand his neighbours and he became a recluse.
He was dying at sixty five years old. He hadn´t called the hospital and spent days in excrutiating pain. The sadness had mixed into it aswell. He often saw nancy´s mangled legs in his dreams and woke in agony.
the pain and grief was so heavy he once passed out while eating breakfast.
He was just about to commit suicide that last weekend of his life but he had a heart attack while he attempted tying a noose. The heart attack went on for half an hour aswell as he begged god to get it over and done with, though back came the overwhelming pain without mercy.
As Tom took the lord´s name in vain for the last time in his miserable life he wondered if heaven existed.
The torturous pain of being alone had never gotten any easier even toward the end of his life.