sleeping with her.
So anyway one day I had to get up early, had a big day ahead of me in work and for some unknown reason I suddenly stopped an stared into the hallway mirror an began to really look at myself and as I looked deeper and deeper, I saw a stranger in that mirror, who was acting just like me and in a flash I had learned something - I got the punch line to my life. I had nothing, I was nothing. I walked right out of that house there and then.
That same day I phoned my lawyer, filed for divorce and left her everything and to whatever toy boy she had on the side. All accept an eight ball my father stole for me - it was the only thing that ever reminded me of happiness. I slipped it into my pocket as I grabbed the car keys from the hallway tray, when I left that morning.”
Then his voice and mannerisms changed from a rigid tone, into an easier, warmer one. You could almost see the memory’s coming out of him. “On my 16th birthday, my father took me for my first beer - he was Russian, the old school kind.
It was late afternoon when we got into that bar. The setting sun was streaming through the dusty blinds, casting long soft yellow rays across the place. Everything felt easy and calm in there…Uncomplicated. Just us together with a few beers, quietly playing a game of pool that was out back.
We both loved the game, played it for years together - we had a small table set up in the garage. Yet no matter how hard I tried when we played, no matter how well I played, I just couldn’t beat him. The old man always seemed to beat me, but I never gave up, not once.
We didn’t talk too much that day in the bar - we were both busy chasing hard for the win. That was the last time I ever felt happy, perfectly happy and that game we played, best game of my life, every shot perfect, till all that was left was that eight ball.
I lined up the shot and it sailed home. I had finally beaten my father - he grabbed the ball quickly, before it went down the pocket and gave it to me with a wink. He said it was my lucky charm now, because I had never given up. I think right at that moment, I never saw a more perfect man, a more perfect father.”
He paused for a moment cherishing the fragile memory. Then the business face and voice came back. “After I’d left my wife, I took a room somewhere downtown and found the bottle - simple as that. I started to wander the bars at night out of boredom and found a lot of other people pretty much doing the same thing as me, so we all drank together in those dank barfly pits and hid from a world that had let us down so badly in life.
And in all those lost drunken nights and pointless memories of a wife I never even loved. Somewhere in all that booze and smoke and fragmented haze. I was getting this growing feeling, I was beginning to let myself slip away into a jaded world of bitter memories, which in truth should have long since been forgotten.
Some mornings, I’d be lying on my bed shaking with the drink. I could feel something inside myself just slipping away. Till one day there was nothing left to slip away. One of the last things I remember was dropping my lucky charm and watching it rolled across the dirty floorboards and come to a stop against my shoes.
I think that’s when I had the heart attack. That’s when I had let the final part of me die - the deepest part - the only part that really matters in the end. My self-respect and love for myself. You see I didn’t fight it back, I didn’t try to grab it back, I just let life break me and I didn’t know what I truly had, until it was all actually gone.”
He shrugged his shoulders deeply and stood like a man in the dock, waiting for his sentence.
“So that’s it, Doc. Truth of the matter is, I let life break me, I gave up. It started with that glance in the mirror an ended on that bed. Some of you might be thinking, how can I sum up my demise - my life like this - I know it sounds sweeping and believe me it is. But that’s what happened. It’s the truth.
And watching you all drinking the other night, sort of brought it all back home to me again. About what I’d let go of. That’s why your idea makes sense to me, Doc. If only I thought of it before I died, while I still had a fighting chance, while I still had a living chance.”
He pointed behind us all. “But I can see the dawn coming now.”
We turned to see a deep scarlet beginning to roll its way along the horizon.
“And if there’s a chance this can work, I’m not goner wasting any more time here than I have to, sorry to say. Life’s taken too much from me already and I hope this really is goodbye to you all. Where I’m going too, I don’t really know.” He reached into his pocket and took out the eight ball and held it firmly in his hand. “I’d like to think it’s with another game with my father.”
He smiled briefly at us and walked back to his grave, waved a deep goodbye and entered.
We glanced around at each other, looking just as confused as Mary had been earlier. Doc slowly picked up his papers, which he’d dropped on the floor and refolded them.
Mary went up to him, her eyes began searching his. “Does that mean it works?”
He put the papers back in his pocket and glanced at us shyly.
Mary again asked him, but this time her voice had the faint cry of a plea. “Doc, does it mean that it works?”
He didn’t answer her, but instead walked slowly back to his own grave.
She called after him. “Why won’t you answer me, why?”
I took her by the arm. “I think only George can answer that now, Mary.”
The coming light was closer than ever. “It’s getting late, Mary, we have to go.”
With the plea still in her voice, she turned to me. “It has to work, don’t you understand, it has too.” She pulled away from me and walked back to her grave. We all followed behind her towards our own.
Our whole world was inside out. Night was day - death was life. Yet had Doc found a way to reverse all this? Could we die again and not ever come back, just by speaking about our lives…Our deaths.
The next night as we all gathered, Mary got very excited and shouted out towards, George’s grave. “He isn’t here, do you see he’s gone, George is gone.”
She all but danced around each of us like a child at a birthday party, telling us the same thing over and over. “He isn’t here, do you see he’s gone, George is gone.”
A weird kind of revelation started to creep in to us, as the thought of Doc’s plan having somehow worked… all except, Scar. She stood alone and looked sadder and more distant than ever. Especially with what happened the other night with her and Mary.
She wandered off and found some flowers that were dotted around the graveyard and put them on George’s grave, then walked back to her own and sat leaning against the small headstone, reading her beloved cards.
I could see Mary watching her from time to time as we all chatted about, George not being here. In the end she walked over to her. They sat together for a long time talking.
Eventually they both came back over to us, they were holding hands. Mary smiled - I could see their hands were locked tight. She looked different, calmer…it looked like her thinking had pulled focus.
She looked once at, Scar then began to speak. “I and my four sisters came from a strong Baptist family and I always did believe in God - even as a small child, it all made perfect sense to me. I went to church every Sunday come rain or shine and said all prayers with a true heart. I grew up as normal, as normal can be. A child who loved to play the piano and dance, I was a good old fashioned girl, who made her momma very proud.
I got married to the second boy I ever dated - Tony Benjamin. We had a good marriage, the kind made out of home cooking and laughter, the kind built for the long haul. The only man I ever truly wanted to kiss - he really was my best friend. We had two children and there’s nothing I want more than to see them all right now.”
She rocked uneasily, but continued on.
“But as the years passed - and they do so easily- I found myself drifting away from God. I forgot to pray, I stopped going to church, my marriage to Tony, the house and kids, even my job just pulled me
away. It felt like I was taken away with the tide of life and I had left all my faith, folded neatly away in some draw.
Then I got cancer, the quick kind. And God never crossed my mind - not once. I was so worried for my husband and our children. What would they do without me, why couldn’t I get better and stay, just too stay a bit longer, I wasn’t asking for much - just time.
All through those weeks in hospital, I never once thought about my life in any other way, I just felt angry towards myself for dying, for failing them - for being stuck in that soulless hospital, surrounded by ill people. It couldn’t happen to me, not me. I don’t deserve it, I haven’t done anything bad. There’s so much left to do.”
She took a deep breath, her eyes started to fill, but she kept it together. Her hands were still locked with, Scars.
“My mother used to tell me and my sisters bedtime stories sometimes, when we were children. We could listen to her for hours - she had the sweetest most loving voice I ever heard, like wind through a willow tree, it was cooling to hear.
One night just after her mother had passed - she came into our room very quietly and sat at the end of one of my sister’s beds. We’d all been crying for grandma. She settled us down and begun to whisper to us in the dark about God and that he wasn’t this big old man in a golden chair, surrounded by swirling clouds, eternally looking down onto this earth with a smile or just some childhood teachings to do the right thing. But that he was in fact in each of us right now.
She said that his voice was our secret, inner voice. She then pointed to the moon and stars outside our bedroom window, saying that his actions were the actions of time and science was here to reveal that fact. Then she leaned over closer to us and said that his love would be our discovery of love and with a final whisper said, "Grandma was now a part of what makes that real for us, she had gone on, she had let go of this life, this time."
And my sin, my terrible mistake was forgetting that. Forgetting what our mother tried to teach us that night.
Fact is. I never got to let go of my own family or any of the things I accomplished in my life. So my soul could go on towards that emotion which shines down this reality - towards the outstretched hand of God. Even at the moment of my death, I still clung to all that I thought I was. I was holding back my faith, by not letting go. I couldn’t except I would never get to watch the circle of life turn again. Of never getting the chance to grow old with my husband - to never see my children have children.”
She paused for a moment and looked down, a little shaken by what she was saying.
“I understand now, what my mother tried to say to me and my sisters all those years ago, that we must each find the courage to let go of this skin and bone, when the time has come, to say goodbye to our own life, our own consciousness.”
For a brief moment it seemed like she held her breath, but with a smile she looked up to us. “So that’s what it was for me. I didn’t let go of the grip of life when I should have, but I am now.”
With that she let go of Scar's hand and gave her a hug, then turned to us all.
“I just wish I got to say goodbye to my family properly to, Sally and Ben - to my husband, Tony. To tell them for the final time, how much I love them. But I know in my heart of hearts they're out there now somewhere living their own lives, having come to terms with letting me go, I can accept that.”
From her blouse, she unpinned a small silver button in the shape of a caterpillar.
“My sisters gave this to me on Thanksgiving, when I was 18. They said I’d turn into a butterfly one day, I think I have in some way.
She then looked towards, Scar. “I planned to give this to my daughter, when she turned 18, but I think you deserve it now.”