Barbara Newman's speaker walks through her life one decade at a time, and each stage has its own worry. At twenty she is carefree and a little self-absorbed, dancing with men and thinking only of herself. By thirty she is so worn out by her baby that she can't imagine washing her hair. Forty brings endless carpooling, and fifty brings sleepless nights of fear over her teenagers. At sixty she is awake again, but now she waits for her husband and thinks about divorce.
Then the pattern breaks. At seventy she simply sits alone, and the poem ends on a separate line: she is waiting for these memories to die. The title suggests she wants them gone, not kept.
The mood is weary and bleak. Her years of caring for others have left her with loneliness, and the memories seem to hurt more than comfort her. The plain, flat language makes the ending hit harder.