I really don't write fiction. this is the one and only fictional short story I ever wrote, but in it there are pieces of truth. I know because i had to read it to understand I wrote it.
Fern Campbell sat in her usual place on the vinyl love seat that gave the best view through her hazy glaucoma ridden eyes of everything that was going on. Fern had just passed her one-hundredth birthday. She knew she was a hundred most of the time. Campbell was her maiden name. She had a couple of other married names in her life, but when they were all gone she returned to her original name because it reflected the years that as life turned out were the only happy years of her long and miserable life. She always hated the name, Fern. She never thought the fern was a very pretty plant, and she was indeed very pretty in her youth. Her ugliness came with the years of unhappiness she endured and made others endure most of her miserable life. She wondered why her mother didn’t name her Rose, if she had to be named after a plant. She always related her name to seeing a fossilized fern at the Museum of Natural History. She chuckled to herself that that is exactly what she was today, a fossilized Fern. This Fern died a little each day. Her leaves were mostly brown now and those that were still green had liver spots.
Fern had been an unhappy, miserable person most of her life. A bitch would be the proper term in today’s vernacular. Tragedy entered her life at the age of eighteen, when the only love of her life, Louis, was killed. It’s a long time to be a bitch. It made her hundred years even longer. She had see a lot, but nothing ever replaced the love she had for Louis. Her thoughts of her unhappy life always centered around how much different her life would have been if Louis and she had been married as planned. No one ever replaced Louis, no matter how hard they tried. She made everybody live with her personal tragedy all of her life.
Fern’s mind was like a lottery machine. Sometimes her mind would bounce around in the chaos of the ping pong balls in the lottery machine. Sometimes it would spit out thoughts as fast and as clear as the lottery machine spit out the winning numbers. Sometimes it just sat in silence, resting, staring and sleeping.
The residents began to slowly drift into the lounge area to assume their usual seats in the lounge area to slowly pass away the routines of another day at Happy Valley Care Center. The Happy Valley Care Center was not happy; it wasn’t in a valley and care center is the rationalized term created by baby-boomers to make them feel better about themselves. It was still a nursing home and a nursing home is still a nursing home by any other name.
Happy Valley was actually a very good nursing home given its mission. Oh yes, there was an occasional smell of urine and the other smells of old people in a state of permanent deterioration, but the food was pretty good and the staff tried to take care of the patients as best they could given their mental and physical condition. Geriatric care staffs should get medals for doing what should probably done by the families. The workers are surrounded by craziness, chaos and death everyday. It takes a special person to not crack under the stress created by this service to humanity. God will remember them.
There were two floors at Happy Valley. The first floor was the nicest and was the place for the people who still had their sanity and could move freely at there own pace. The second floor was a human warehouse for those who would never leave until they were wheeled out on an undertaker’s gurney of the dead. Most, if not all, had DNR (Do Not Resusitate) on their charts. Happy Valley was not home to anybody - it was a place to be stored and to wait for grateful death to enter the room. Some didn’t know or care where they were anyway. If you ever wanted proof that women live longer than men, visit a nursing home sometime. Its about ninety-five percent women.
The scene was repeated everyday as they all waited for the Lord and maybe an occasional visitor. It was amazing how some residents who had living relatives never had visitors. Out of sight-out of mind. The scene was sometimes funny, some times tragic, sometimes there were fights, sometimes stealing other’s food and a lot of yelling and calling out to people who were not there and random counting and babbling about nothing and raging, raging at the night.
There were always a lot of flowers around the lounge and at the nurses station. They helped keep some of the odors of a nursing home under control, but sometimes when the beautiful smell of the flowers was mixed with the horrific smells of the nursing home the results were sometimes more sickening than the smells the flowers were supposed to cover up. Most of the flowers were donated by relatives of deceased residents, who didn’t know what else to do with them. It was a good thought, but generally not noticed by the residents. If they did notice, their thoughts were not on how beautiful the flowers were, but on wondering who died. When someone in the nursing home died, it was handled in a quiet and non-disruptive manner. The daily routine moved on as if nothing happened. There were no tears. The family, if there was one, was notified and the designated undertaker came and wheeled them out under yellow plastic hood that fit over the rails of their gurney of death. Death happened quietly. It was never unexpected. To the residents, someone who was there yesterday was simply gone today. It would be only a passing moment wondering where the person was, but then the routine continued as if nothing ever happened. Death is an everyday occurrence at Happy Valley. For the residents death is a happy event. Maybe that’s where Happy Valley got its name - it does sound better than Death Valley. Death is treated, as it should be, as another event in life.
Jennifer, the geriatric aerobics and activity director for Happy Valley, appeared as usual at ten o’clock in the morning and two o’clock in the afternoon to try to give the residents something to get their mind and body parts to work. She was a happy person who loved her work. A positive attitude is mandatory to be successful in caring for the more than elderly. Her primary job was to get people who really didn’t want to participate to participate. Sometimes there would be a grade school choir singing off key, but that didn’t matter the residents were off key themselves in more ways than one. Every morning was devoted to some geriatric aerobics. Geriatric aerobics really meant trying to get their arms moving. The residents sat in their chairs or stood if they could and listened to Jennifer’s instructions. “Let’s do fifteen arm raises” she called out. One, two, three, four ..... Let’s do five more, she shouted enthusiastically.” Pete was one of the original curmudgeons of Happy Valley and always a reluctant participant in any activity. He had more of his faculties than he let on so that he wouldn’t be bothered by anybody, particularly, Jennifer. This last instruction was the last straw. He lashed out, “ Damn it kid - why didn’t you say twenty in the first place. Didn’t you think anyone would notice?” Actually nobody, but Pete did. God Bless Pete he is still raging at the world to let them know that he “ain’t” dead yet.
Fern noticed through her fogged eyes that a young man approached the desk. “Why that looks like Louis, she thought.” “No, it couldn’t be he’s been dead some eighty years.” But it was.“Oh, Louis why did it have to happen.” “God has never treated me fairly my whole life.” “The only happy time of my life was when we were together. “I remember the first time I saw you.” I was ten and you were fourteen. You didn’t even notice me, but I noticed you. I thought you were the handsomest boy I had ever seen. I never changed that opinion. Then one day when I was sixteen you came into my father’s grocery store and noticed me for the first time even though you came in most everyday. Oh what a glorious romance we had. You graduated from high school and got a job at the Union Traction Company, the interurban street car system that carried its passengers all over Indiana. I remember that moonlight night you proposed marriage, and I accepted. It was the night before the big train wreck up in Wells County that killed 240 people and you. Oh how I cried. Nothing could take away the grief I had. No one ever did.
Why did God let this happen to me? I never found anyone like you even though I tried my whole life. I waited until I was twenty-seven to marry. I married because it was the thing to do. At twenty-seven in those days you were destined to be an old maid. William was seemed like a good man when we married. He worked hard at the foundry. He would come home all sweaty and stinky with a load on that he an the boys would put on at Folkies Tavern. When he was drunk he was mean and he often beat me. I stayed as long as I could bear and then just took off. I became a drunk myself and didn’t sober up until I was fifty. Oh Louis how could God let this happen? How could he ruin my life this way? If only we could have been married life would have been so different.” The second time I married it was for money. I was still a looker, even though I had a few miles on me. Robert was a kind and gentle man, but I didn’t love him. I married him for money and security. He worked and traveled most of the time and I stayed home drinking my wine. We had a couple of kids that turned out to be basically jerks. Hell I’ve even outlived them. I’ve outlived them all. When I think about my life, I guess I was a mean spirited person, always looking out for myself. Oh, Louis we would have been so happy. I tried most everything on the face of the earth to find that state of happiness we shared so long ago. Nothing ever made me as happy as you. Everybody was less than you. God and you made me the miserable person I was and maybe still am.
This long soliloquy tired Fern out, and she dozed for a minute. She only woke up because they called lunch. She never missed her lunch. She always hated lunch. However, if she were asked what she had she could never remember, but it was good. She moved to her assigned seat by herself. She had a habit of stealing other peoples food and often picked a fight with her table mate. Finally she was punished by getting a small table all to herself.I t was more like a baby chair with a tray that locked her in. Actually she liked being by herself so it was not punishment at all.
When lunch was over, she took her slow walk down the corridor to her room for her formal afternoon nap. As she entered her room, she could see the young man who had been standing at the desk earlier was sitting in one chair of the two chairs in the room. It still looked like Louis.
Hello Fern, it’s Louis, the young man said quietly.
“Oh Louis, I thought that was you, but I wasn’t sure. It’s been so long. Why haven’t you come to see me, inquired Fern.”
“Because I’ve been dead for eighty years, Fern, he answered softly.”
“I know that, but that’s not an excuse. Louis, why did God let you die so young and let me live a most unhappy life that has lasted longer than it should?” My life would have been so happy if God had not done this to us. We were so happy.”
“Why have you come after all of these years?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve come to take you to the other side. It is time Fern, but before we go we need to talk about what happened to me, to you and to God. God hasn’t been sure you belong with us in Heaven. Miserable mean persons. who have treated people the way you have treated people all of your life don’t usually get to see the glories of the heavenly place. It is a heavenly and happy place, and we like heavenly and happy people there. He, I should say we, are not sure you qualify, but since you have lived a hundred years that may have already been your hell. God reconsidered, and I am here to help you if we can come to a meaningful resolution as to what your life meant.” Fern, you must see the light.
“What do you mean by that, an understanding about the meaning of my life that God brought on me.”
“Fern, let me take you through it. First of all God’s plan for me was that I have an early death. Even though we were friends and lovers and about to be married and I know my death was not without affect on you, it was my plan and my death. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, my death affected me, not you. We accept the fact that a grieving period is necessary, but then God expects people to get on with their lives. You didn’t do that. You mourned your whole life and made everybody miserable. Thank god they all died before you. God expects people to mourn and then put the tragedies behind them. It doesn’t necessarily mean forget the good times we had, but it does not mean to dwell forever on them.’
“You see what we missed by not being given the time to marry and live happily ever after. It was as you saw it, a picture perfect Camelot where everything was one happy event after another. Let me tell you Fern no one’s life in the whole world has been or ever be one happy event after another. That is has never been God’s plan for anyone. Sure we were happy, but we were young and we had none of life’s real experiences. We were in the heavenly bliss of true love and nothing more. Our marriage would have had all of the ups and downs that any marriage has. Who knows, it might have even ended in divorce. We will never know because we don’t know what God’s plan would have been for the rest of our lives together. It doesn’t matter because it never existed.”
“God expects people to get on with their lives. You didn’t and everyone who came in your path suffered. Others may have viewed you as a very strong woman, but in reality you were weaker than any of them, and you took your unhappiness out on them.”
“Oh, Louis I’m so sorry, but I loved you so much.
“That’s no excuse to be the sorry person you were most of your life.”
“Fern you have lived a full life. Your were beautiful and you were wealthy. You tried everything available both good and bad to find happiness and you never did, because happiness is a state of mind that comes from the inside. Fern in the end the only thing that matters is the love of God and family. Nothing material on earth matter in the long run. It is a person’s family and the love of God.”
Suddenly it felt like a weight was lifted from her shoulders and a light went on in the lottery machine. She could see for the first time. She understood that her unhappiness was not because of God or Louis’ death. It was because of herself and her inability to move on with her life, and the dastardly way she made everyone pay for this inability.
Oh, Louis I see. - I really do. I am so sorry. She cried real tears for the first time in a long time. I beg your forgiveness and all the people in my life who I have hurt their forgiveness and the forgiveness of God. Please forgive me. She sobbed and sobbed. The sobbing was the weight continuing to be lifted from her. They were tears of joy. Louis held her quietly and gently hugged her and patted her back. He was as happy as she. His only love would be with him forever. Fern was the last person he would have to help through the passage of this life to the everlasting life of heaven.
“We’ll Fernie you’ll get that chance to ask for all of their forgiveness in person because they are all waiting to meet you when we arrive. It’s time to go.”
Louis took Fern’s arm and they walked out the door and down the hall into the light. Happiness was ahead. A second chance to make it better. And she would be with Louis finally and forever. How could Heaven not be a happy place.
No comments:
Post a Comment