She sat across from me in her own kitchen, the stained-glass chandelier looming over our heads.

And she listened to bubbling rants of a girl who didn’t know how to make intrigue less intense or passion less peppy.

The 94-year-old woman sitting in the other room had given up on life and we were here, in the center of it all, buzzing.

We could skip over nursing homes and intravenous tubes and head right into breathing life into scribbled words on a page. Not because she particularly planned on writing a book, but because it seemed nice enough to think about.

Nicer than cold, frail arms and skin that hasn’t seen sun since last October. Hands that need other hands to stand up straight and feet that fumble over carpeted floors.

We headed for tips for writing short stories and “where do you draw your inspiration from?”

Blue skies over thunderstorms. Anything to steer the ship for safer shores.

We avoided the parts where I told her about giving up on life, about depression, about old age and real life getting the best of you.

I skipped right over the passage about life expectancy rates and she tried to skirt around the issue of growing old herself.

I watched the cheeks of a 75-year-old woman break out in stress acne and realized we’ll do anything not to think about love and what it’s done to us. A friendship spanning more than half a century sat on the table like unspoken promises and cards she wasn’t ready to fold.

She’d bet on the races coming into town for the weekend and the winning lotto numbers, but her friend’s life wasn’t one of them. She’d hold that hand of cards until someone told her the casino was closing for the night.

It’s the first hand she can’t cash in on, the only one she can’t control.

So she turned the tables on the young girl still free from betting habits and chained to the 8 o’clock news to listen to the evening drawings.

My handmade journal became the most important thing in the room, for just a quiet afternoon in the heat of July.

I started by showing her the colored threads weaving across the front cover. Let her feel the handmade pages from India, each a different thickness.

Like our days of the week and moments in the day—first light and cheery, then heavy and dark.

She started asking questions about ideas and inspiration like I was a dictionary with a definition for every sticky situation and tough question she came across. I didn’t know any of the answers.

It’s the first time I realized anyone could worry themselves busy, clinging to anything other than the knowledge that tomorrow might be harder than today—not easier.

I did what I do best: I kept talking. As long as the words spun inside her head, she didn’t have to think about the elephant in the room.

I told her how I felt like more of a writer then than I’d ever felt. And her eyes lit up.

That’s the first time I realized writing could save a life, could pump blood through arteries and keep demons at bay.