Courage Journey

Death is like the moment a computer turns off.  The machine is humming and whirring and warm underneath fingers that hover over the keyboard.  Hitting the shut down key, all instantly stops as energy seeps away.  There are no residual whirs or clicks and the keyboard quickly and steadily grows colder.  Death was like that with my mom.  One moment she was On, humming and whirring and warm in my hand in the hospice.  The next moment she was Off, deafeningly silent, growing colder by the second in my tightened, desperate embrace. Death is like myth creation.  The story of the moment of dying becomes its own epic tale, complete with heroes and villains, Truths told and lies forgiven.  The deathbed becomes a beggar's ditch or a pristine family tomb depending on the telling.  Death was like that with my dad.  His story became a white knight legend, with him as the hero bravely fighting cancer as the villain.  He was laid to rest in untouc...

Gnarled hands clutch a sandwich, the cheap white bread peaking out over the wrapper whenever he raises it to his thin lips.  Crumbs gather in the corners of his mouth and on his lap, but he pays them no mind, chewing with abandon and sometimes closing his eyes to really enjoy the taste.  He quietly takes in the rest of the park as he eats, his legs thrown out in front of him and crossed at the ankle as if he is totally at his leisure.  He is unaware that the kids on the playground are also taking stock of him. "How disgusting," little Emma says. "He's a pig," chimes in Zachary. "Probably smells like farts," a young boy named Phoenix will venture.  At this, they all giggle and return to playing in the sand. Further away, the moms will twitter to each other, heads bent close, trading hawk-like surveillance of their children for surreptitious glances over their strollers at the old man on the bench. "I heard his kids won't speak with him anymore,...

  My grandfather’s girlfriend has many suitors, as my grandfather is well aware.  She has never spoken of these other men, but he knows all the same.  When she comes to him, the idea of the others trails behind her like the last moments of a breeze.  Sometimes she is sun-kissed and warm, the smell of sunscreen almost overpowering the whiff of cologne at her neck.  Almost.  Other times she betrays more, the heavy smell of a sweat that isn’t hers clinging to the leather of her bowling bag, never obliterated by the smoke from the bar.  A coat she doesn’t own wrapped tightly around her shoulders returning from a day of unanticipated cold, the fabric rougher than anything she would purchase for herself.  He never asks, and she never offers.  From the moment she steps into his presence until the moment she leaves it, she is all he cares about.  She comes to him on her knees, putting her hands on his legs as he sits in his easy chair, their c...