Prompt: "Sorrow" (Companion piece to Chapter 28). Characters, wish as I may, still don't belong to me.
11 years old, shot my dad.
19 years old, Mom dies.
31 years old, partner murdered, mentor betrays me.
34 years old, tortured.
34 years old, love of my life says I'm the thing she wants most in the world, and that it's destroying her.
35 years old, watching her in that chair.
35 years old, her leaving me again.
38 years old, the two no's that came before the yes.
55 years old, my daughter's first broken heart.
75 years old, It's Alzheimer's.
In my lucid moments, I like to list moments in life. Those that remain with crystal clear detail. In a life filled with joy, albeit, a bit backloaded, it is the moments of sadness, the moments that threatened to crush me that often come through the clearest. And it's always the last one that makes me the saddest.
I've spent the last 40 years of my life with the most amazing woman on the planet, my real life superwoman. But I'm not blind, she had her flaws. She's always been too cautious about her own happiness. And I've been happy to take her hand and lead her, tugging a little if necessary, into the life she, we, deserve. I just always felt lucky that she let me hold that hand.
But I can't lead her through this. And that's killing me; it's the saddest of sad things on my lucid memory list. I can't help her through this because I'm not me half the time, and that ratio's only going to get worse.
The sad lists should probably stop. They only serve to make me angry. If I leave her with the happy lists, the moments of pure joy, maybe that'll be enough to pull her through...
31 years old, meet Tracy, Fern, Kensi.
