20 Day Challenge #2

This is prompt #14: Tell a story backwards. This ended up a little sadder than I intended at first, but that happened when I made the decision to bookend this story with a matching first and last sentence; I ended up going for a story about disappointment rather than a straight tale of someone's life.

          This is how it ends. Not with a flash of memory or a rush of emotion, but with the resigned acceptance of someone who has lived too long.
          You see your frail hands, the soft, translucent skin. The swollen joints and shaking fingers that once were your livelihood. You remember the days of retirement spent metalworking, the projects you sold because you were asked, not because you needed the money. After years working construction, you found it difficult to be still.
          This was never how you thought your life would go. Your parents raised you on ideas, but you worked better with the world in front of your eyes. Their disappointment seeped into every lull in conversation, though they tried to hide it by flooding the pauses with meaningless words. They never hid it well, not  when you were young and boisterous and quick to anger. Their tempers were too even to understand your outbursts.
          When you were born, they were full of hope and expectation. This is how it always begins.