I never posted this because I feared medical inaccuracy. But no one is perfect, right? We all live to learn.

Please treat me kindly.

Derek had noticed that things around the house had remained untouched for days. He and his mother barely lived at all anymore. Everyday was a awaking nightmare. Things were beginning to collect dust from their disuse. Especially things his father had touched… before he was hospitalized. He remembered the last few happy days he had spent with his father… and then…

"Mom?" They young boy's voice was shaky and quiet as he watched his mother cry. She was alone. All alone in that big bed. The bed his parents used to share. The bed that all three of them would sleep in when he had had a nightmare. The bed where he could safely snuggle between his two loving parents. "Can… I come in?" The woman's response was a broken affirmative. He watched the tears slide down his mother's cheeks and felt the tears that burnt at the back of his eyes spill over. His father was no longer able to comfort her.

"Oh, Derek…" she quietly sobbed into her pillow, "I love you, I'm so sorry…!" She embraced the boy and, in her sorrow, sobbed harder.

"I love you too, mom… And no… I'm sorry…" They both sat, embracing, and collecting their thoughts. "Is… is there anything you need me to do?" Derek asked, his voice thick and cracking.

"No… no… please… just stay here with mommy, okay?" He nodded and kept his embrace strong. "Oh, god… Derek… I… I hope you knew how much he loved you. How proud he was of you…" The boy nodded, a new wave of tears spilling silently from his eyes. "You were the world to him, baby."

"Mom was also his world…" he replied, feeling as though all the energy had been drained from him… but crying this hard usually did that to a person. The funeral had been earlier this afternoon… and he had spent the entire time staring at the casket. That casket… it held his father's body. The realization hit him as the casket was lowered… His father had died. His father was never coming back. He would never again smile… laugh… slack off… crack ridiculous jokes… come to soccer games… or help him annoy his mom. He was dead. Dead. Gone. "Mom… was his favorite lady in the whole world. The only woman for him." He yawned lightly, snuggling into his mother's embrace. "Mom… why did dad… die?" She had never explained it to him.

"He… he had a brain tumor… and he didn't tell us that he wasn't feeling well…" Her voice hitched, finally realizing that her husband had probably known about it longer than her… and knew that there wasn't anything that could be done to help him. His problem had been completely incurable… "Remember?" The boy nodded quietly. Seeing his confused expression, she decided to explain further… for his sake. "A brain tumor is a bunch of cells that grow sporadically in the brain. It's not healthy for a tumor to be in the brain… that's why your father kept getting those severe headaches and throwing up. And after a while, started to lose his eyesight and lost the movement in his leg. And finally…" She mentally kicked herself at the use of the word, "He had a seizure on the ride to the hospital…" The woman closed her tired eyes and the memories flooded back.

/"Honey! Are you all right?" She watched as her husband collapsed, grasping unto the doorframe. "You… you look ill! You should stay in bed! You've had a terrible migraine all day. Why not sleep it off?"/ She remembered the look upon his face. The look she didn't get back then, but she could tell what it meant now. The look on his face clearly read, /You shouldn't worry about me. You shouldn't… you shouldn't worry about a dying man./

"And… he… he…" The woman began to cry softly. "…passed on. Why…? Why didn't I see that something was wrong?! He just kept lying to me…! He covered it up so well…!" Derek shook his head.

"Mom, stop it! Dad wouldn't want you to blame yourself… He wouldn't…" The memories of that day were fresh wounds in young Derek's mind…

/"We're so… sorry, Derek. Your father… he didn't make it." His mother sat near his father's body, her long hair falling into her eyes./ The brunette closed his eyes tightly. He could hear her words clear as day. /"I… hate you…! You stupid, good for nothing… Why… didn't you tell us you were hurting?! Why…?! Why did you leave us?"/ Derek had never heard his mother speak in such a manner. /"I can't believe you're gone…" A sob fell from her lips as she put her head in her hands. "No… Please… come back…!"/

"Mom… when… will it stop hurting?" She ran a hand through her son's brown hair, she knew for a fact that her loving husband would have an answer, as he too, lost his father young. And if he were still around, he would probably say,

'It never stops hurting. Never… But we cope with it… and we move on, because that's what they'd want you to do!' And then he'd go on into a story about his lovable, crazy mother… And oh, how she missed him… She looked over toward their wedding picture and almost relapsed into her previous fit of sobbing. They had both been young… and happy… and… damn it!

Why…? Why did you have to leave us? The woman closed her eyes and recalled the smiling face she missed so much. Her husband of merely eight years… Her husband who died at a young thirty five... Her husband whom she had constantly chided for having disheveled brown hair, hiding his russet eyes behind dirty glasses and being slightly irresponsible. Her lovable, silly, happy-go-lucky surgeon, her Doctor Derek Stiles.

She inhaled deeply, kissing her bespectacled son upon the cheek. Despite knowing the answer, the one that her Derek would have provided for their son, in her mind, Angela Stiles decided to go with her own answer.

"I don't know, honey… I don't know…"

I figured a brain tumor would make more sense considering the deceased's "gift".
I'm sorry it's kinda depressing.