Hawaii

My boyfriend and I pretend our mothers are not dead but rather spending their eternity in Hawaii.

Hawaii
On a white-sanded beach in Hawaii sit two women in their fifties. The shorter one in a purple and white lounge chair, the kind with the rubber stripes. The tall one’s chair is identical but hers switches pink and white rubber bands. They are sipping tropical fruit cocktails out of coconuts and pineapples, adorned, of course, by tiny, colorful paper umbrellas. They have sun-bleached hair and sun-soaked skin, the color of a creamy cappuccino. Where the palm trees are so big they could produce enough coconuts to make enough coconut custard pies to end world hunger. An elaborately-colored umbrella holds the shade in this paradise found. The sunsets seem touchable if you’d reach up just right. The shorter woman is smoking menthol cigarettes because, you see, there is no cancer here. No illness. No hospitals, no surgeries, no doctors, no pain. The soothing sound of the waves crashing could cure insanity. It is effortlessly beautiful. It’s free of sandflies and other annoying critters. A light, fragrant breeze blows over calm ocean waters in the mornings. The backdrop is filled with hills and mountains contrasting the bluest sky. There are large rock formations where colorful, tropical fish congregate in the dark blue to greenish blue waters near the shore.
These women spend their days collecting shells, sipping drinks, and soaking in the sun. This is their own personal heaven. And the heaven was dreamt for them.
On a white-sanded beach in Hawaii, two women in their fifties, but no older than twenty, sit in their custom lounge chairs, eternally living their lives.