4 Chapters

I wrote this story, which is in my forthcoming collection, Collapsible Horizon, when I was helping take care of my father during the last year of his life in Alabama. Camroc published it, April 2011

My old father's world is going into 4 cabinets, which he rearranges constantly in the air, wanting us to organize whatever it is. He reaches his hands in the air, while we hold his blankets down. His mouth is open wide, as always, horrible sounds coming from it. 4 chapters, he says. We took care of 1 and 2, now it's time for 3 and 4. But they're out of order. He says they always get things mixed up. I ask who and he says God. I know what he means. But I don't see the cabinets, or know how to put the 4 chapters he's talking about today into the drawers that are invisible, floating, above his bed he's been in for a year, me sitting next to him, becoming a spinster. My love went away long ago, left me sitting here. I don't see the chapters. But I can make them up.

1. We die.

2. We become like snow.

3. We drift.

4. We become the thing you forget, turning crystalline, sparkling, clean, and fresh, and melt away.

3. we drift 2 like snow 1 and die 4 and you forget 1 you ever loved us 3 you thought we were beautiful 4 we want to die 2 we dressed like snowflakes for christmas 3 you thought we were beautiful 4 you went away, felt like dying 2 we used to melt together, be one flowing water 3 we were like beautiful crystals 4 I am dead to you. So I am dead to me. 1 I am you, melted snow. I am no longer we. 3 but you don't care.

Reviews

[Tantra Bensko]

Thank you. This has been a favorite story for a lot of folks. There are probably many versions of losing someone to discombobulation that almost everyone has experienced to some degree. I wrote this one when I was living in rural Alabama with my father for the end of his life. I read him some of my stories at the time, sitting by his bed, and though he was never a fiction reader, he liked that I read them to him.

[roarke]

The first half is some beautiful writing. The second half is all original format. Combined they tell a story that only those who have gone through this scene in their own lives can even begin to relate to. Yet, it needs to be told.