She stands before the doorway, silently watching as they move around her in what one may mistaken for some nickel and dime theatre companies latest abstract masterpiece. She squeezes her tongue through her purse mouth, wringing whatever moisture from it, as she tries to wet her dry cracked lips.
“Why do I still hurt?” she hisses with a scowl upon her face.
“You have not lifted the pen from the paper yet my dear. For you are not really feeling pain, you are just imagining it hurts because that is how your mind has become trained. It will take time to forget, but you will, once you lift the pen.” he says with a soft smile, as he grasps her shoulder tightly.
She looks over to him as she rests a hand on his, and gives it a squeeze, then looks back to the others with eyes shrouded in sorrow. “Will they be okay?”
“That is no longer your burden to carry anymore. Let them go, so you can as well.”
“B-B-But, I’m not ready to,” she says as she looks to him with tears in her eyes. “I-I-I, I don’t want to be forgotten. I-I-I, I don’t want them to forget me.”
“They will grieve, and in that grief, in that pain, they will prosper and they will NEVER forget. For in death, grows the perfection of the eternal memory, where we are remembered forever by those we love, and who love us,” he says as he gestures to the air before them.
“But what of the pain I still have? What of my grief for them?”
“It will prevail, and over time it will heal. Although unlike those you have left behind, you have the knowledge they do not, you know what awaits. You have the forever of tomorrow to look forward to, and when they pass, they will join you here. They will join all of us, one day, but for now,” he says as he holds a hand out for her to take. “It is time for you to go.”
She looks back at them, and places a hand against her chest, clutching herself tightly. “I-I-I, I don’t want to GO!”
“No one ever does, but it is time, and time has a finite path. The others are waiting,” he says.
She looks back over to him as her eyes widen, “A-A-Are they all there? E-Everyone?”
He smiles, “Everyone is there, and they all can’t wait to see you.”
She looks back and allows a soft smile to gently caress her lips, then turns and takes his hand.
“How long will it all take?”
“How ever long it takes,” he replies with a smile as he pushes open the doorway and they step out into the hall. She manages to turn just as the door closes and catches one last glimpse of the body that housed all she was for the last seventy years, and waves goodbye, then looks up into her father’s eyes and smiles.
He nods his head towards a bright light at the end of the hall. “Race you there!” he says, as he looks down at the little girl all dolled up in her pink dress. She giggles loudly as she races off, towards her forever tomorrow…
-by Matthew
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