The Last Story: A Short Story

Death-

1. the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.

Let me just start by saying Lillian Todd was the most amazing woman I've ever met.

My wife, Lillian, was the definition of perfect . Beautiful, witty, classy, funny. She had it all. She was that one person that could just light up a room with a single smile, and everyone, and I do mean everyone, loved her.

So I just can't seem to figure out why God would take her away so terribly from me.

I remember it had rained all week; the sky was painted a sickly shade of grey that honestly just bored me to tears. I was at work, the kids were at school, and instead of staying home Lillian had insisted on going into her office.

Lillian was a writer, and much like the way a painter needs a studio to paint, Lillian always needed the right environment to write, and she had found that in the cozy little office we had been renting since Chandler, our first child, was born. She wrote children's books, and had successfully published four of them, but that wasn't why she went into the office. Every single day, of every single year Lillian would write short stories to read the kids before bedtime. She'd read the one of the stories every night and another she'd sometimes write in the same day would serve as a backup, just in case her imagination failed her and she couldn't come up with anything. It never seemed to though. Lillian pulled ideas out of her head like magicians pulled rabbits out of hats.

I've always worked a lot. I'm a doctor at Banner Desert Medical Center, one of the top hospitals in Arizona.

But I never thought it kept me away from my family. Or at least I didn't when Lillian was there.

When they called me with the news, I was livid convinced it was a twisted joke. I mean, death doesn't just happen the way it did to her. You don't just trip, and fall and well...die. That just doesn't happen. So why the hell would it happen to her? Leaving the office and entering the registered parking, on which her car had been parked on the 4th floor, she tripped down wet, rained on stairs, fell off the side rail, and hurtled 40 feet down hitting the pavement and instantly cracking her head open.

I made the mistake of asking to see the body. With a simple look at the distorted, unrecognizable corpse of my beautiful wife, I found my guts churning.

I ran to the nearest bathroom where I heaved up my lunch, breakfast, and dinner from the night before.

It's been three years. Three whole years since she died, and my family has neither accepted it nor mourned her. I guess you could say it's a strange and morbid situation we're in, because today is the day the stories run out.

Since Lillian's death I've been reading the backup stories every single night to the kids. When I do it...I don't know how exactly to describe it. It just feels like she's here, you know? Like she's not so far away, like you can touch her, hug her, kiss her, and it's really her. Not that spirit shit that people tell you about at church.

That's why we haven't exactly been grieving, because as long as we have her stories, as long as we have her words, it's felt like she never really left.

We're basically horribly in denial.

Not to mention it's also brought me closer to the kids than ever before and prepared me for what was about to come; the last story.

I would have to be more of a father than ever now, because the grief would set in, and once the grief set in, we'd finally have to deal with all of this.

The fantasy would be over.

You can't prepare yourself for something like that; you can't just randomly start sending signals to your brain telling it you'd actually have to move on now, and it wasn't just me I had to worry about either, it was me and three kids. Three kids that had all lost their mother so horribly, I mean how to you prepare them for that?

I took a deep breath and walked into the room where my kids were waiting for me to read to them like I always did.

As soon as I looked at them my heart stopped, and I choked on air. This was it.

"Are you sure you can do this?" Chandler immediately asked. He was a tall, robust 16 year-old boy with his mother's gentle eyes.

I nodded. I had to be the one to do this, I was the adult. I needed to be strong for everyone else.

I looked down at the piece of paper in my hands.

As I began to tell the story of a girl who lived in a colorless, depression-filled town, I couldn't help but notice my children's' faces becoming more and more twisted with some type of sick, disturbing pain.

Especially Lilah, my 14 year-old daughter. Halfway through the story she burst out crying, and locked herself in her closet. We had to take a break to bring her back into the living room; there she had to be comforted, and held by tiny Edyth, who was only 7.

"Suddenly a red balloon burst through the clouds, as sunlight burst through the horrible gloom. Suzy Gray clutched unto it. She giggled, as she soared away, and above the sad, little, black and white village into a big blue sky, where she flew forever enjoying the colors of the world."

I finished the story, and looked around expecting weeping kids, and a thunder storm.

Lilah was smiling now.

The world didn't explode like I secretly thought it might. I was shaking, but the kids almost seemed, happy, less troubled, like a sheet of oppression had just been lifted from the entire house the very second those last words left my lips.

Like we were subconsciously letting go and we didn't even know it.

Maybe this wouldn't be the end. Maybe it was just the beginning.