Month: April 2009

Remembering Archie

Posted on by bryon

We are storytelling creatures, we humans. Our sentience notices our mortality and mixes with our fear and so we tell ourselves lots of stories about death.

We tell ourselves that the unjust are eternally punished in either darkness or flame. This is especially popular if the unjust are beyond our reach in this life.

Even more important: to stave off our personal dread of the trip each of us must take alone to Hamlet’s undiscovered country, or to console ourselves that the parting we now make with a loved one is not final, we tell stories about a Valhalla or a Heaven, where we and those we love will yet live and enjoy peace and plenty.

When a beloved pet dies, we may tell ourselves a story about how our furry family member has crossed Rainbow Bridge.

As a storyteller, I could probably come up with something good along these lines. But my stories would be no less wish fulfillment than these others. I am increasingly convinced that the only stories to be told at such a time, the only true stories, are those the mourners hold in still-living memory.

Today, I mourn, and I think this is no time for other stories or for the flights of fancy I create.

The more-than-year-long run of one new piece of fiction a week ends here. Grim, tearful reality now rules as we grieve for a wonderful little dog we knew for almost two years. Perhaps there will be more to say about this later; perhaps the stories I hold of him will work their way into other stories that will then be more true because of the sharing. And perhaps we’ll get back on track next week. For now…

how empty the yard
without him –
our well-loved Archie

Fiction: Noisy Neighbor

Posted on by bryon

“Maddie! You’ve just gotten here and already you look like it’s time to go home. What’s the matter?”

“Emily, I hardly got a wink of sleep last night. You remember how I’ve told you about that old lady who lives next door to me? The widow?”

“Yes?”

“The one who always turns up her radio, or turns up her TV because she’s half deaf and can’t hear it. Well, I’ll tell you this! Everyone else in the building can hear her radio or her TV.”

“Oh, dear. Was she at it again last night?”

“I’m telling you! She’d been up and down with it throughout the evening, and I’d have to bang a little on the wall. ‘Mrs. Kevitz!’ I’d yell. ‘Mrs. Kevitz! Turn that racket down over there!’ And just as I’m settling in and going to sleep, I’m getting Danny Thomas yelling at his bratty son on a rerun of that old Make Room for Daddy!”

“Oh!”

Continue reading “Fiction: Noisy Neighbor” →

Fiction: Accept Our Condolences

Posted on by bryon

Marla started working her way through the pile of mail that the girls had been stacking up on the end table. It was mostly sympathy cards, of course. The electric bill, punctual as always. A reminder from her dentist that it was time for her checkup – as if she cared about her teeth after losing the man she’d loved. And an envelope bearing the name of a local law firm. She opened it.

“Dear Mrs. Furst:

“Please accept our condolences on the sudden death of your husband, Jacob. He was quite pleasant to know and we were pleased to have done some work for him shortly before his death.

“Enclosed is a bill for services we rendered before his untimely demise, in the matter of the divorce proceedings he was about to initiate. Needless to say, these arrangements had not been completed, nor had he finalized his new will to include his son, Samuel, by Ms. Torie Champel, whom he was planning to marry at a later date. She has retained our services and you may expect to hear from us again regarding that matter and Samuel’s share in the estate.

“All payments are due 30 days after the date on the invoice.

“Again, we are sorry for your loss.

“Sincerely…”

Fiction: Easter Bunny

Posted on by bryon

Nothing like getting up for sunrise Easter services to make for a long day, Ruth thought. It wasn’t such a problem even a few years ago, but now…

Her niece, Clio, and Clio’s husband and two girls came over to take her to church. As always, the service was beautiful, although Ruth was a little distracted.

They went back to Clio’s home afterward for a big brunch and the children explored the goodies in their Easter baskets. Clio drove her Aunt Ruth home about 1 p.m.

“You’re a little quiet today, Aunt Ruth,” Clio said, keeping her eyes on the street.

“Am I? Well, perhaps.”

“I know; it’s not the same.”

Ruth smiled a little. “Nothing is ever the same, dear. Even in our most carefully practiced traditions, something changes, whether large or small.” She sighed. “This latest change, though, is harder to get used to. The hardest one since Mother and then Father died. I’d had years of small changes, or of exciting changes, like your girls coming along. Losing Esther…” She trailed off.

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Fiction: Corner Pocket

Posted on by bryon

Jeff stared as the second hand on his watch ticked away another hour, winding his mind tighter and tighter.

There was a morbid fascination with watching the seconds of one’s life tick away irrevocably. People did it in all sorts of ways, not realizing that was what they were doing: microwave oven timers, a New Year’s Eve countdown. Whenever someone would say something like, “I’ll see you in two weeks,” what it really meant was, “When two more weeks of my life are over, then I’ll see you.” When someone said, “I wish it was the weekend already,” it meant, “I have no use for the days of my life between now and then.”

Every deadline, every scheduled event was a way of keeping track of more of life going by.

Jeff was entering the fourth hour of watching the second hand grind away the moments of his life. There would not be a fifth.

And what, really, was the difference between watching the time tick by on a wristwatch and what his mother and grandmother were doing? They had gone to the church to pray, and they had doubtless been saying the rosary for as long as Jeff had been watching his watch.

The results would be the same.

Few had seriously considered a threat from the stars. That was the stuff of science fiction. And politicians define as “a waste of money” anything that doesn’t immediately pay off for them personally. Thus, no deep space early warning system, and no countermeasures for asteroids taking aim at humanity’s only home.

This one was special, too: it wasn’t going to hit the Earth. Not directly. It was going to hit the back side of the moon at just the right angle to smash it and rain continent-sized missiles down on the planet.

Jeff continued to stare at his watch. After the long vigil, it finally read 6:18.

This, the scientists said, would be the moment of impact in orbit.

Only moments to go now, Jeff knew. And he sat in his home, shut away from the praying and the crying and the screaming, watching the second hand of his watch. His mother had given him the watch as a high school graduation present only the year before. A simple inscription was engraved on the back: Psalm 90:12.

It had been his late father’s favorite verse and Jeff hadn’t had to look it up: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

The loudest and last sonic boom Jeff would ever hear shattered the silence. And the windows. And the planet.

Einstein told us that God doesn’t play dice with the universe, Jeff thought just before he died. But he does play billiards.