I just felt like I needed to write something tonight. It's a short short. What do you all think? jon Goodbye, Charles J. M. Strother My life has been full. Full of joy. Full of pain. Full of hardship and happiness, sorrows and delights. Eighty-five years makes for a full life, after all. Now, in an instant, I see it reflected back at me like tiny dioramas flashing through my mind. The joy of coloring books on the living room floor, while staying home from school with the measles, my mother fussing over me, due to my illness. Like so much of life, a mix of good and bad, but it is the good that stayed with me. The fever and itch are really completely forgotten. I see my friends at play, and at mischief. Mischief never very bad, but mischief none-the-less. My mother would be so disappointed in me. But, as they say, boys will be boys. I do not regret these petty transgressions. In the scheme of things they are but a triviality. God surely will not damn me for soaping old man Johnson's windows. There is my seventh grade history teacher, Miss McMann. I lost my heart to Miss McMann, there in the seventh grade. She was tall, and dark, witty, pretty, stern and fair. I had had crushes before, but none like Miss McMann. I was heartbroken when I learned she was getting married, and devastated when she and her new husband moved out of state during the following summer, never to be seen again. I think I still love her, really, a love that never was. But there were loves. Not many, but a few, starting in my late teens. I see Helen and Caroline, both in senior year, and then Audry in college. We were going to marry, but never did. We graduated and went our separate ways. She back to Richmond, to work in her father's store. His was one of the lucky ones that survived the hard times. I stayed in Blacksburg, to pursue my Master's Degree in chemistry. Then the war came along, December 7th, and my life took unexpected turns. I joined the the Marines out of a sense of patriotism, and rage. Deemed officer material, having a college degree, I soon found myself on the Pacific Isles. There was nothing pacific about them. We trudged form island to island, fought, killed, and died. A life of abject fear, constant loss, rotting toes. My toes still itch. I was no hero, but neither was I a coward, and did my best to keep my men alive. I grieve the ones I failed. But without the war I would never have met Suzzi, in Occupied Japan. She was unlike any woman I had ever known, quiet yet self assured, and quick to laugh despite the hardships she had endured throughout the war years. We met at a dance, and arranged to meet latter, which was of course, forbidden. Yet another of my transgressions in life. And what a wonderful transgression it was. We married. Then there was Michael, and Paul, and James. Three boys. I was never blessed with the daughter I so much wanted, but cherished the gifts I was given. Children, I believe, are the greatest joy and pain a person can experience. They made me appreciate what my own mother and father had put up with. And more. Unfortunately, much more. Michael died at the age of two, taken by the flu, those bright eyes and that infectious giggle gone for good. I would have rather lost my right arm and both eyes. Indeed, I would have easily traded my life for his. But life is what you get, the bad with the good. And that's about as bad as it gets. Other images pass by, fleeting glimpses, passing ever quicker. Jobs won and lost, little league, camping in the mountains, graduations, weddings, grandchildren. Then there are the foggy years, when my memory began to fail, not much imagery stored up from these latest years. But all in all a good life, a full life. I can't complain. So now I look down at the bed, where I lie with the family gathered round, and regret little. This time comes to all. I am no exception. There is Suzzi, and Paul and James, Paul's wife, and most of the grandkids. The doctors are gone, to allow for a moment of privacy, the machines are, at long last, disconnected. I feel free, light and light hearted. I look at Suzzi as I float away, and manage catch her eye. She looks up to me with a wry smile, gives a little wave, Goodbye, Charles. Paul pulls her to his side and strokes her hair. And I am gone.

 
~jon
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