A Very Elderly Lara Croft Remembers the Stalagmites and the Stalactites

When she was young and lithe, she often mixed them up. But now, confined to a bed in a nursing home near Chicago, she recalls them with crystal clarity.

Stalagmites are the ones that extend up. Stalactites are the ones that hang down.

Caves have a smell. They leave a taste on the tongue. They prickle the skin, that cool dank air.

The scream of bats and skitter of rats.

Has she jumped or a chasm or two? Or two thousand? Oh god yes, she has.

In her mind’s eye, she can see herself as if from behind. Running, leaping, swinging.

Scaling.

Punching, when necessary.

Climbing, almost falling.

Holding on for dear life.

While she lies there and sleeps and occasionally dreams, people come into her room. Sit by her bedside. Stroke her forehead. Some tell her to hold on.

But she’s been holding on her whole life.

To rocks. To vines. To platforms. To little notches in cliff faces.

To the conviction that what she was doing was important.

She never learned to play the saxophone, though she’d always wanted to.

Lara could have been a crackerjack astronomer, with the proper training.

She could have been an artist. Maybe not world-renowned, but who cares? She had that view from her bedroom window, of the lilacs. Mountains in the distance. She could have painted that. She almost did, decades earlier. She’d gone out and bought the paints. The canvas. The brushes. But they all sat unused in her closet. Probably they are still there.

Lara could have been a teacher. She could do more than climb over boulders and punch crocodiles in the face.

Back then, she clung to everything.

But it is a different time now.

A nurse comes in. Cleans her up. Gives her a drink of a tasteless fluid. Dabs at her mouth.

Stalagmite of billowing sheet. Stalactite of drooping tinsel. It’s Christmas again. Somehow again.

She thinks now it is time to let go.