So, something new from me. Something different. This is not another sequel and this is not something I have done before... hope you like it!
Chapter 1
I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
It is such a cold day that I can see my breath coming out in white puffs. I have the feeling that I can even feel those puffs against my skin while I walk forward, walk through them. It feels like my own breath is tickling my cheeks and I blink from time to time when they reach my eyes.
It is getting dark already and the heaven is not black yet, but it's getting there. Where the sun is setting it has a red colour and the leaf-less trees give the whole scenario a surrealistic touch. Walking through a colourful comic must feel this way, if the characters in comics can feel anything.
Slowly I put one foot in front of the other, leaning on my cane. I hear it make a clicking sound every time it touches the pavement. Tock, it makes and then I hear the slurring sound of my own, limping, steps.
The hand on the cane is cold and my fingers are aching from gripping it all the time. My right hip is hurting as well, for years now, because the artificial hip-joint they had to give me a while back is too old now and needs to be exchanged. But for what?
I have to pause after a few steps to catch my breath, even though I am walking as fast as a turtle. Maybe even a snail, I don't know, never raced against them.
While I am leaning on my cane, I look up from my ducked position and realize that I am standing in front of the house I grew up in. God, that was a long time ago.
The facade of the house is still held in the same white and the brown windows are also still there, which are slightly askew, because my father built the house himself. Build a house, plant a tree, father a son, three things a man should do before he is allowed to die.
I planted a tree, I fathered a son, but I never built a house, at least not entirely. Fixing some things here and there yes, but that's it. Maybe that's why I am still alive? I don't know, but I fathered two sons that should equiponderate the house.
The house has a new roof I realize while I blink against the red of the sky, which blinds me.
The black shingles are gone and have been replaced by blue ones. Everything changes with time and I am grateful that our house never needed a new roof, because Lorelai loves the blue tiles, I'm sure.
On the right side, over the roof over the porch, there is the window to Liz old room, the window to my old room on the left side of it.
Somehow there must be abrasion tracks on the window frame, because she climbed out of it so many times, but it's not visible from down here and certainly not with my bad eye- sight.
I remember that my room had blue walls. I think my parents painted them blue before my birth and they stayed blue until I moved out after my father's death.
I remember that my parents spruced my room when I was seven or eight, but they used the same blue again.
A few months later my mother was dead and the little shell we had lived in was shattered.
I slowly start walking again and put one foot in front of the other.
None of us had thought about death, because she hadn't been sick. Later I asked my father if they had known anything about her illness, but he said that they didn't have a clue. He woke up in the morning and she was lying beside him, dead. Still today, eighty years later I still can remember it.
The black car that came to take her body away I can remember, I think I will never forget the license number. It is burned in my brain.
I started my third school year without my mother and the cookies she had been baking the two years before I had missed the most. The comforting scent of them when you came home after the first horrible day of school, it had been gone.
After my mothers death I spent a lot of time in my father's hardware store, played with the screwdrivers, because he wouldn't allow me to bring my toy cars into the store. This is a business and not a playground, he always said and I can still hear his deep rumbling voice.
-This is family, you care for family-, was another one of his sayings. -If you ever act like a jerk I will kick your ass-, another.
I can't really say what molted me more: The first few years with my mother, or the next few with my father. Maybe the many years without them.
I can remember a lot of things my father said to me, but none of my mother. I wasn't that young then, so maybe I should remember. But the most useful thing that she told me that I can remember is – Change your underwear, Lucas- that's it.
Oh, that's actually something I remember about her, she always called me Lucas. I don't know why. I never asked her and I forgot to ask my father about it, although that wouldn't have been very wise. I think his answer would have been "Because that's your name, Luke".
My father was a very down to earth guy, as Lorelai would say, one that thought always rational and was more self-reliable than was good for him.
I think I got that from him, but I learned to let it go a bit over the years and rely on my wife.
I don't know if my father ever relied on my mother, maybe their marriage wasn't as good as we kids always thought. Maybe he just changed after my mother died that night.
I can't even imagine what shock it must be if you go to bed at night with your wife next to you and wake up the next morning and find her dead body because of an aneurism.
I think I wouldn't have been able to call the ambulance or the police, but he was. So maybe he really was that practical.
I don't doubt that he loved her, he never married again, although that could have been for the amount of work and the short span of time he had. Was my father dating?
Strange what kinds of thoughts are coming to my mind nearly seventy years after his death.
Oh, there it is, the Diner. It's nice to know that it is still up and running, my staff is doing a fantastic job. My kids call me crazy because I am refusing to sell it, but I guess that will be something they have to do after I'm gone. But I'm old, I have a right to be eccentric, I mean it's not like I am still serving the costumers.
Now Fred has seen me and he waves, I guess I have to wave back. God, my hand hurts.
TBC