Dear Diary, I Lied

“Dear Diary,”

That’s how I always started my writings in my beat up old notebook… I don’t know why, nostalgia, I guess. Maybe I just wanted to be like a “normal” teenager from back in the day. Back when you went to the store to buy things, instead of to scavenge, and hope the items you needed hadn’t already been pillaged or destroyed. Back when cars where for driving and showing off, not for dodging behind and using for cover. Back when… yeah, back in the day. It really hadn’t been that long ago, six months, maybe a little less. How quickly the city had become mayhem. I remembered it like it was a million year ago, like a lifetime ago. The EMP, electromagnetic pulse, that had knocked out communication systems, then the air strikes that had taken out the power grids. There were rumors of country places that were still living like normal, that faraway from the cities life went on like it had before. That other countries had power, and phones, and television. There was no way to confirm that, though, so we scavenged what we could, fought others off, and survived. Waiting for confirmation that we weren’t the last people on earth. No one in our crowd knew what had caused the EMP or the airstrikes. Dillion thought it was aliens, Cassy said it was the Russians (her words: “it’s always the damn Russians.”). Eddie said it was our own government, showing other cities around the country what would happen if they tried to rebel (“…how else do you explain the fact that there’s no help coming from anywhere?”). I thought it was miserable. I thought it was Hell, and I didn’t care where it came from, I just wanted out.

“Dear Diary,” I mumbled, starting my writing over again. “We lost Grandpa yesterday, that’s why I didn’t write anything.” Tears blurred the page in front of me for a minute, but I wiped them away, knowing that the blood stains were still on the sleeve I was brushing across my face. “We were just having dinner, best dinner we had had in a long time! Grandpa found me two cans of peaches in heavy syrup! We had finished our dinner of roast rabbit (I hate roast rabbit, have I mentioned that before?), and we were passing the can of peaches like it was a champaign bottle at a party. They were so, so very good. Then the marauders came. Guns blazing like they always did, those bastards. The peaches hit the concrete and the last three slices slid out of the tin like goldfish. I reached for my 9mm, and my machete, dropping my fork like a hot potato. Eddie had already fired three shots, and Grandpa was just squeezing off a round when I heard a sickening splat next to my ear. The next minute I was deafened by the sound of his .45 going off. Then Grandpa leaned hard on my shoulder, and I knew what the splat had been. It had been a bullet striking his chest. As I let go of my machete and reached around to stabilize him I felt warm blood on my arm. Gently I stretch Grandpa out on the ground and pressed my hands over the wound. I looked around for something more than just my hand to stop the bleeding and found a rag of some sort. I pressed it hard against his chest, then looked down at this face, it was ghastly pale.

‘Grandpa?’ I whispered, hoping he could hear me over the gunfire. ‘Grandpa hold on, Eddie will be here in a minute, he’ll know what to do.’

Our gunfire must have scared off the marauders, because almost as suddenly as it had begun the shooting was over. Eddie was kneeling on Grandpa’s other side, putting his hands over mine to hold pressure on the wound. He was calling out to Cassy and Dillion, telling them things he needed. I wasn’t listening to Eddie’s words, I was listening to Grandpa, he was whispering.

‘My beautiful little girl,’ he said, raising his hand to my cheek. ‘So much like your grandmother, her eyes, and hair.’ He reached his hand down then, and into his pocket. It took what seemed like an age, but he finally fished something out of the depths of his pocket and brought out a small, object that dangled from a string or chain. The thing glinted in the firelight, and I saw it was a necklace, a tiny gold locket, in the shape of a heart.

‘I gave this to her on our first anniversary. Meant to give it to you on your birthday, but today will have to do.’ He said through gasping breaths. I took the locket, knowing it was covered in blood the moment I touched it.

‘I love you, too, son,’ he whispered, turning his attention to Eddie. ‘I don’t have anything to give you, but I love you. You be good to my little girl, and you get her out of here. There’s a better place outside the city, I know it.’

Eddie nodded, but his quivering lip, and pressed harder on the wound.

Grandpa turned back to me.

‘I love my little girl so much! I hate to leave her like this, but she’s strong, she’ll get through, and she’ll remember her old grandad who tried to get her away safe.’

‘I love you, Grandpa!’ I’ll never know if he heard me, because his eyes closed just at that moment and never opened again. I didn’t cry then, but I am crying now so I can hardly see the page.”

I stopped writing, and looked up to see Eddie standing over me, he wasn’t crying, but he was hurting just like me, I could see it in his eyes.

Eddie picked up my diary and began to read. At first, I thought about stopping him, but I didn’t. I let him read it. I watched his face as he read, seeking, like many new and insecure authors, to see how it affected him.

“Except that’s not how it happened,” he said. “It was awful, gruesome really. Grandpa’s eyes didn’t close, and he didn’t say good-bye or any of that. He screamed, and groaned, and then he died with his eyes wide open. They glazed over and…”

“Stop it Eddie!” I cried. “No. Of course that isn’t how it happened… but it’s how we all wish it happened; like in the movies we used to watch, where no one dies alone, and someone gets that closure of good-bye.”

“But why did you lie?” Eddie asked, looking back at the page.

“So I could heal,” I answered. “Because even in this messed up world, even with the end for all of us so close, we all need closure. No one should die alone, and no one should have to live the regret of not getting to say good-bye. That’s what art does. It gives us what reality doesn’t. Hope. Courage. Closure. That’s why we write; act; sing; paint; draw; dance; create… because real life, the fight just to survive, doesn’t give us what we need to really live. So we lie, to create the truth we need to go on. To look for tomorrow, to hope for the best, and to dream of better days. Grandpa didn’t die in my arms, I know that, but I wish he could have, I wish he could have told me about the locket, instead of me finding it in his pocket. I’ll never really know where it came from, but I don’t care. It was my grandmother’s and Grandpa gave it to me… that’s how it should have happened. That’s how I need to remember him dying.”

Eddie nodded quietly.

“Alright,” he said. “I guess you’re right, that’s how it should have happened, and it feels better to think about it that way. Keep writing, kid, maybe someday someone will read it and find a piece of hope that helps them remember something the way it should have been too.”