Last Breath

Hello Dearest Nature-led friends!

June Photo Submission: Water – Extended submission deadline

New Due Date: July 7th (subject to change)

Thank you to Lisa, Kerfe and IDV who have already emailed me their pictures.

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Last Breath

I’m heading home to say goodbye.

She was the best archnemesis a teenage girl could have asked for. We were young, brash and fierce. After thirty-five years I can honestly say she was the worst gold digger ever met! Why? Because she wasn’t a gold digger at all. She really truly loves/loved my dad.

At the peak of our hostility, we were eating in a nice family spaghetti restaurant when she looked at me the wrong way or made some trite comment. Who can even remember now? I flew across the table at her, and she was ready for it. We started to tussle right then and there. It took two servers and a busboy to separate us. We were informed in the parking lot we were no longer welcome there. As we all gathered in the car. My stepbrother and stepsister, little kids at the time, quietly sobbed in the backseat beside me. My dad was gripping the top of the steering wheel tightly and my stepmom and I waited to be declared winner yelled at.

Instead he said in a firm measured voice, “I really liked that restaurant.”

Now every time I think about that moment I laugh.

Her and I, we buried the hatchet some fifteen years ago now.

She was a rural postal carrier. Delivering packages where Amazons feared to tread. It was a hard job and sometimes dangerous. She’d been bitten by a dog and a squirrel, rolled in the jeep, blew out both rotor cups in her shoulders and dealt with wildfires, snowstorms and crazy people. So many times, she wanted to quit, but she felt she’d already been there too long to let go and dreamed of retiring with nice federal benefits and retiring happily ever after. She would text me from the side of the road on some of her toughest days. When she needed someone to remind her how fierce she was.

I’m frustrated and sad that she won’t get her happy ending. Cancer comes now to steal her from us quickly. She can rest now. Her shift has ended. I’ll hold the fort. I’ll keep watch over the ones we love. Cancer sucks!