Ran into an old lady at the dead mall near my place

There was this woman in her 70s sitting on a bench by the old food court fountain, staring at nothing. She told me she used to bring her kids there every Saturday in the 80s and now she just comes to sit because it feels like a cemetery. Made me realize how much those places held for people, you know? Anyone else run into someone like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jade9d ago

You're glorifying a sad old lady haunting a dead mall.

betty1449d ago

Thing is, you're not wrong about her being a sad old lady in a dead mall - that's exactly what draws people in. Nobody's out here pretending she's running some kind of empire or living her best life. What gets me is how she turned a situation that would crush most people into something that gives her purpose. She's not just sitting there staring at walls, she's stacking cash and keeping her brain busy when most folks her age would be rotting away in a nursing home. The mall's dead but she's still kicking, and there's something about that stubbornness that hits different now when everything's falling apart.