I Guess Life Was Simpler Back Then

She had a fondness for stringing beans. Popping off the ends, pulling out the strings, and throwing each parts into identical buckets by her feet. She could sit on the porch chair and work in such a fashion for hours on end without a moments rest. Breaking, stringing, tossing the green beans into buckets from morning to night. As the buckets would fill, someone would replace them with empty ones and as the large bowl of unstrung beans dwindled down, someone would exchange it for a full one. She didn’t seem to notice though. She would only stare ahead, never looking at anything; never even looking at the green beans as her hands quickly popped off the ends, strung out the strings, separated the parts. My great-grandmother could remember only one thing of her past life. She could only remember how to string green beans.

--from the short story, Kids on the Farm, which I never finished because I....really, I don't know why I didn't finish it.