One Last Day

“He’s just out there…waiting for you. He knows what is going to happen, he knows this is goodbye for both of you.”

Her heart stuttered, stalled, then started pounding a hard unforgiving rhythm. This all started with a letter…no, this all started with death…but that wasn’t entirely true either…this all started with love…

$20,000 is to be paid to the deceased’s next of kin.

Deceased.

That had word echoed in her head as she’d limply held the letter at her side. How does someone go from being a fully animated, living, breathing human being with a name and a life and a personality to…the deceased…

There were rumors, whispers of a man with the power to reunite the living and the dead. All it would cost was the last thing the deceased had given to you. In this case, $20,000. She had grabbed her bag and walked out the door…and now here she stood, in a strange machine, well, a time machine she supposed but good luck wrapping the mind around that one — with an even stranger man that was now staring at her in concern as she swayed back and forth before him.

He reached out for her, as if to comfort her, but then withdrew his hand. Instead, he redirected her attention.

“Perhaps if I were to explain the process a bit more clearly, this might ease some of your fears.” She watched as he reached in his jacket pocket and took out a small black book. It was worn with time and crackling along the spine as he flipped toward the back, “Ah yes, here we are, please come have a look.”

She closed her eyes, and took deep breathes trying to center herself. She could smell leather and sea air mixed with spices, it was comforting, and, after a moment, she opened her eyes and approached him. He had the book open on top of the machines control panel. She could see drawings, strange symbols, and writing in a language she didn’t recognize.

He smiled over at her as he hunched over the book and started pointing things out to her.

“Time is thought to be linear, it’s how we are able to perceive it, how we attempt to control it, to bend it to our will. We are creatures of pattern and so we must arrange everything in ways that give us a feeling of order amongst the chaos.” His hands slid across the pages as he reverently touched on each symbol and design.

She looked away from the book and up at him, “Why are you telling me this? How does this help?”

“Ah yes, of course, I merely mention it as a way of trying to do the same for you…bring some order to the chaos I have introduced into your life. The man standing outside these doors, in a world of your own creation…a dream within a dream…is in fact, the actual man and not a construct. I have merely stepped through a bend, an overlap if you will, in time, and brought him through to this moment…or in our case, this stasis. This encounter is real but the location is quantum locked. It only exists if you are occupying it, and therefore it is outside of time.”

She stared at him in confused understanding, taking in everything he said and processing it the way one sees an abstract painting. The colors and shapes were all there and it made sense in the way that it made no sense at all…order from chaos.

The hand he seemed reluctant to offer in comfort earlier landed softly on her shoulder. “He is moments from his death. It had to happen this way to prevent either of you from attempting to change the outcome. His death is already written,” Here he paused and flipped to the middle of his black book, and pointed to a line halfway down the page.

She leaned in to get a closer look and closed her eyes against the sting of tears welling up. He was pointing to a name and date…

“His date of death is already in the book, it can’t be undone, no matter how much either party wishes otherwise. When you are done saying goodbye, he will go back, he will have the memory of this time, but, past you will not. Take some comfort, most of the dead never get this chance.”

Anger rose swiftly in her, “What chance! The chance to know you are going to die within moments of your return and there is nothing you can do about it! The chance to be terrified! To mourn your own impending death! Is that what you’re referring to!” She stormed away from him and his black book of death and manipulation.

She felt his sigh more than heard it as he slowly closed the book and placed it back inside his jacket. “No, my dear, the chance to say goodbye. Most people, the living, the dead, they never get the chance to say goodbye.”

That stopped her in her tracks, furious pacing forgotten as she lost the battle against her tears. She stood silently crying and openly stared at him, this man, this man that could do the impossible, that had only done what she had asked of him.

“This place is a sort of dream, you control the surroundings and you will recognize places you’ve never seen before. This gives you both a safe and controlled environment to take all the time you need to say goodbye.Time will move differently here, it will be almost dreamlike, more of a flow than a slog. It will all seem natural I promise.” He walked over and opened the door, a waft of sea air sweeping in, “He’s waiting, my dear.”

“What if I can’t do this?”

“Then we leave.”

She hugged herself, closing her eyes in a futile attempt to stem her tears, “But he’s waiting for me.”

“He is”

Blindly, eyes still closed, she started walking.

She stepped out the door into the crisp autumn air and spotted him immediately, he was standing with his back to her overlooking the ocean from a veranda. She stopped and just watched him from afar, not being able to see his face and yet recognizing him with her very soul.

What was he thinking? What would it be like to know that you only have hours left to live? What regrets must be running through his head? How many bargains has he tried to strike with invisible gods? Just for one more day…

The light shifted, creating a golden lilac aura, almost otherworldly in its nature, like the land of the living and the land of the dead were overlapping in this moment, with this man, that had one foot in both.

She stood, still frozen, her insides twisting up around her heart and squeezing, whispering, “Go to him” while her feet remained cemented to the spot. Tears filled her eyes, silently cutting tracks down her cheeks, she watched his hair toss in the wind through a blurry filter of salt water that seemed to add to the otherworldly effect surrounding this moment…this time and this place…where her father was still alive for one more day…maybe those invisible gods had answered his pleas after all…just one more day.

She had always thought of herself as strong, nothing in life had ever defeated her or kept her down for long, but now, standing here, facing the one thing she missed more than anything else in her entire life…facing the piece of her that was missing, that had died when he died…she froze, was weak, she was scared…terrified…and that was new.

The tears had been falling steadily for an indefinite amount of time and finally her breath hitched, just slightly, and that was enough…her heart seized as she watched her dad stand a little taller, saw his shoulders tense, and then, slowly, ever so slowly, he turned to look over his shoulder and their eyes met, both watery, both scared, both with a sadness so deep it transcended time.

Still frozen to the spot she watched as he turned fully toward her, leaning back on the veranda railing. He put on a brave smile, a smile so bogged down in sadness it stabbed at her like a physical thing, “Hi, sweetheart.”

Shoving down the pain, the selfishness, the agony of knowing she was going to lose him one more time, she smiled, “Hi, dad.”

One more day, he had one more day.

They had one more day…

She watched as her dad’s breath hitched as, he too, seemed to steel his resolve as they started toward each other.

One more day…the light shifted, and the dream fell away, leaving the two of them facing one another as the darkness began to creep in over the lingering blue of twilight. Reality swept in on the cold ocean breeze…not one more day, one last day.

One last day…

She surged forward and let herself be held like the child she felt like in that moment. She put her ear to his chest as she embraced him and listened, one last time, to the beat of his heart, to the labored pull of his breath, as she had done her whole life, secretly dreading the day both would stop, now knowing exactly when that would be…

One last day…

She held him tighter, surrounding herself in his familiar smell. It’s strange the things you miss about people when they are gone, things you were never really conscious of while they were alive, like their smell, how comforting it is, and how heartbreaking it will be when it’s gone forever. She breathed him in, trying to hold back the tears that kept burning hotly down her cheeks. She felt him squeeze her in return, felt the hitch in his breath, knew he was crying too.

One last day…

She pulled back, wiped at her eyes and face, scrubbing the grief away, she looked up at her dad. Her dad, alive, not well, but alive. Reaching up she gently touched his cheek, “So…”

She waited, and he didn’t disappoint…

Breathing a laugh through the last of his tears he looked at her fondly, gratefully, he replied, “Sow buttons.”

She let out a garbled laugh, this was her dad. Her tragic hero, flawed and broken, his heart should have grown cold years before his death but instead it had only grown more loving and generous.

One more day…

He seemed to grow uneasy as the moment went on, she stepped back a little more to catch his eye, “So, anything you want, all of time and space, what should we do first?”

Surprisingly, he seemed to withdraw even more before he hesitantly started to speak, “I thought maybe…I wanted to, I don’t know…maybe, just… talk. Just tell you all the things I always wished I could tell you. No lies, no excuses, just talk and tell you everything I can think to tell you in the time we have left.” He spoke all of this while looking down at his shoes and only flicked a quick glance up at her once he was finished.

Her heart swelled with more love for him than she thought possible, “I’d love that, I know a place down by the water, you said once that you missed the ocean.”

“I did, do, that would be great.” His smile was both childlike in its innocence and heartbreaking in its knowledge of how finite and fragile his time here was.

One last day…

She wove her arm through his and turned them toward stairs leading down to the cooling sand.

One last day…

“Did I ever tell you about the time I scored the winning run for my baseball team?”

“No, you didn’t, when was this?”

“I was eight years old and I had been practicing my…”

Their voices trailed off in the wind as the moon rose above the horizon to light their path…

One last day…

And the stars smiled down on them.