A Dusty Memory

Peter Gosling didn’t tell anybody he was diagnosed until it was no longer possible to hide it. He refused all medical treatment and kicked his children out of the house when they came to grant him his last wishes. The only thing he asked for was to be left alone and to die silently with dignity.

Now a man in his 60’s, his life hadn’t been very long and eventfull, but despite this it had managed to have been extremely tiring. Peter had been a good man, in more than one sense of this word, a good honest man. Working hard from 9 a.m. till 6 p.m., 6 days a week, 10 and a half month a year, to provide for his family, his stay at home wife who cooked and cleaned, and to give better education and opportunities to his two sons and daughter, opportunities which, as he often told them, he didn’t have. Ever since he had gotten married at the age of 26, his sole purpose in life had been to protect the well being of this family, and once this mission had been completed, once the children grew up and left the nest and he was given a reasonable pension, except the occasional visits from their grand children, he and his wife found themselves having nothing better to do than watch commercials and sope opera re-runs on an old dusty television with just 10 channels and sound problems.

The day he died had been like any other, which was exactly what he wished for. He woke up at 9 a.m., got up slowly all the while producing painful grunts. His wife, who was already dressed, was brushing her hair or at least the paper think mass of what was left of it. He walked by her in silence, the two of them hadn’t spoken properly in years and once the truth about him hiding his disease got out it broke the last strings connecting them. It was as if they woke up from a long slumber, only to find themselves living with the person not even mildly resembling the ghost of the one they had loved in their glorious youth, but to who’s company they had gotten so used to that even the thought of their absence made them lonely. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, put on his old fashioned striped shirt that clenched tightly around his big round belly, went into the kitchen and drank the tea his wife prepared for him, went into the living room and sat down on an old sofa that was once green but now was mostly gray, he sat in a room that smelled of medicine and kitting wool and watched and hour long commercial dedicated to a new vacuum cleaner, ate the dinner his wife prepared for him, sat on the balcony for a while, watched more TV, sadly looked at the keys of the piano that hadn’t been played for years, drank the tea his wife made for him, changed into his old striped pajamas, that where once red but even now clenched tightly around his big round belly, went to bed that smelled of medicine, well ironed sheets and mattresses that hadn’t been aired for years, he was soon joined by his wife in her long white grown and at exactly nine p.m. they turned off the lights.

He died that night, as everybody would think –in his sleep. But that’s not true. The truth is he woke up sometime during the night and realized he was going to die. So he just lay there waiting for death to come. As strange as it may seem on his death bed he didn’t wake his wife to tell her he loved her one last time or to at least thank her for all these years, nor did he think of the children he sacrificed his life for, who he hoped would be smart enough not to do the same, nor did he think of his parents who he had tried so hard to please his whole life, or his friend who he sometimes played chess with at weekends. The only memory in his mind was that of a hot, sunny day in July when he was 20. The day so hot it made all the dust from the rode that the wind blew towards you stick to your skin. He was standing at the side of a county rode with Jenny Lively. Beautiful Jenny Lively with her sunny blond locks and wide smile, her presence lighter than air and eyes in which there was always sunrise. She was trying to use her straw had to protect both their faces from the dust. She kept asking him why he couldn’t come, asking him to come, saying she would miss him all the while giving him quick kisses. He kept answering that he wanting to come, but he couldn’t, he said he would also miss her, and made her promise over and over again that she would come back to him (a promise which she didn’t keep), all the while playing with her hair. With one last kiss she was gone and onto the big bus that was once blue, full with young hippies and punks and goths and jokes , random drunks and stoners , people with big dreams, writers, silly country girls, nerds, future famous musicians and future New York city bums. Soon he bus was gone, in a mixture of more dust and smoke and loud music and he was left there, alone at the side of the road, surrounded by a cloud of brown dust, watching the bus get smaller with a heavy chest, feeling as if something had ended.

This memory had followed him his entire life, more than anything it had been just a beautiful memory to reminisce about from time to time, to tell the truth it had never made him think or regret any of the decision he had made in life, but as he quietly slipped away into death with a small smile playing on his lips, he felt as if he was yet again given the chance to bored that bus.