“My soul is very anxious to die soon.” Those words have hunt me for more than two decades.

I met Mrs. Elizabeth my senior year in college. I was working on my thesis, a documentary photography project that ended in an exhibit and book. It was called “Searching for the Soul”. For moths I went several times a week to a retirement home to interview and photograph residents. My introductory question, because I thought something light would break the ice, was “What is the soul?” Yes, most residents did not find it very inviting at first. A natural shy person, I had a hard time establishing conversations with the residents at first. Many of them, confronted with the resistance to aging, hated having their pictures taken. Nevertheless, I came back everyday with prints to my improvised models. Some were grateful from the beginning eager to share the photographs with their loved ones. Others were so self-conscious that hated seeing their photos. One woman, tore up a print with anger in front of my face. It took me almost three months for her to like her pictures but by the end, she was the one begging for one more photograph.

One afternoon, several residents were playing bingo in a social area, teenage volunteers calling numbers aloud. Some folks were sitting parallel to each other without talking, lost on the realm of their memories; a few men and women were absently minded precisely because they were in the process of losing their precious memories. As I walked around taking candids of the residents, I observed a woman in her nineties standing next to a column. She was thin, just like her hair that hit at her shoulders. A yellow headband with a tiny bow in the center on her head and a blue jacket that she hugged around her waist. Her grin…although partially toothless, was the shiniest, biggest, most extraordinary smile I have ever seen. I had to go talk to her.

“Excuse me, can I ask you a question…” I said timidly while I approached her, camera and notebook on hand.

Mrs. Elizabeth looked at me with her grayish eyes and her imprinted signature smile. I was not sure if she heard me. The sound of music and talks in the background made it hard to strike a two-way conversation, especially when hearing was a skilled commonly reduced among the residents.

“I am not sure what you are asking me, but I will try to respond…My soul, my soul is very anxious to die soon.” Mrs. Elizabeth said without losing a single ray of sun coming out of her smile. Judging by the way the room suddenly got lighter, I could swear golden beams extended from her body.