For fifty years, Rose and Charles Bennett had built a life most people only dream of. They raised two children, survived recessions, illnesses, and the quiet erosion of time. Their home in Portland was filled with laughter, family photos, and the faint scent of Charles’s pipe tobacco. To anyone looking in from the outside, they were a portrait of lifelong devotion — steady, constant, unshakable.
But inside Rose’s heart, something had begun to crumble.
At seventy-five, she found herself staring at her reflection one morning and realizing she no longer recognized the woman she’d become. Every decision, every sacrifice — where to live, what to cook, how to spend weekends — had always revolved around someone else. She had been a wife, a mother, a caretaker, a friend. But who was she now?
“I feel like I’ve lived my entire life for everyone but me,” she told her sister over tea one afternoon. “And now that it’s almost over, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Her sister had squeezed her hand and said gently, “It’s never too late to find yourself.”
Those words lit a spark. And that spark became a wildfire.
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