Rick
We declared ourselves a couple and started talking about our future together. The near future. We weren’t in any sort of hurry. December 19th you flew to Pennsylvania to spend Christmas with your family. January 7th your father drove you through a blizzard toward the airport in Philadelphia, where you would fly to London to teach for a semester.
I hate this part of the story. There’s nothing going for it but the truth.
The blizzard was so bad, so dense and white, that the going was treacherous and, more important, slow. You asked your dad to pull over so you could duck behind a tree and relieve yourself. He didn’t realize, when he pulled over, that you were on a bridge. You stepped out of the car and, unbeknownst to him, hit the 12-inch high railing and went over.
He waited for you to return.
He got out of the car after a few minutes, paced and stomped in the snow, calling your name. Sometimes he thought he heard you calling back. He didn’t understand what had happened until a highway patrolman stopped and he said, “I can’t find my son.”
You died two days later. I drove from Florida to Pennsylvania to attend your funeral. To meet your family and to say goodbye. I drove without sleeping and stared hard into the white winter sky, searching for something like grace.
georgelondon
Short, bleak and without hope. Liked the way it read honestly and unlike a writer had written it, as if it tumbled pure from her mouth by the graveside. Thanks Cyn.
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Rivka Jacobs
This is the kind of short story that is so real, the reader feels thrown back, disoriented.
It’s got the cold, hard feel to it of a narrator who has shut down her emotions, in a state of supreme disbelief and grief. Perfectly told, it gives me a chill to read it, but at the same time, it makes me angry because these things happen way too often. (I must try to quell any urge to rant about “good people” and “what kind of God lets this….” and all the rest….)
Again, technically speaking, expertly written, never losing focus while at the same time, somehow forcing the reader to identify with the narrator and feel what she is feeling.
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Wow, Cyn. Short, sharp and raw. Very tight piece of writing indeed. Thankyou!
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