THE CROSSING

One day I was playing with my friends and it seemed like the next day, I woke up in the hospital bed.

My dad noticed that rather than playing with my friends, I was sleeping more. I didn’t want to eat, my stomach hurt and then the doctor visits began. The doctors would lean close to me and speak in friendly voices. I didn’t really understand what they were telling me but I began to realize I was sick and they were going to help me get better.

For a long time, I believed them.

Even my dad told me I would get better but after a while he quit telling me that.

There was this pain, in my stomach area, I think, and they gave me medicine for it. The medicine helped with the pain but it also made me very tired. I hadn’t seen my friends in a long time and at first I missed them but after a while I didn’t really think about it. I think the medicine made me not care. All I wanted to do was sleep.

I was barely aware when they moved me to the hospital. It seemed that one day I went to sleep and when I woke up, I was there, surrounded by more doctors, nurses, and tests. Everybody was very nice to me but I came to understand that I was very ill. I thought that maybe I was going to die.

I was thinking about it a lot, being sick, the pain, and being so tired all the time and one day I asked my dad if I was going to die? He hugged me, looked right into my eyes, and said no, the doctors were going to help me get better.

At first I believed him.

I drifted out of the haze and an eye fell open allowing a sliver of light in. The room came slowly into a hazy focus.

It was familiar. Different from the hospital. Then it became clear to me, I was back in my bedroom at home.

There was a shape taking form in the haze. I was having trouble remembering what it was when with a small burst of clarity, I knew. Xmas tree. Small, fuzzy, colorful clouds of light floated in the room. Christmas lights.

I remembered now. My dad had placed the tree on a raised table so that I could see it…..because……I hadn’t the strength to push myself up to see it.

I was pleased that for that moment my thoughts were connecting. The thought passed by, slid into the haze. I watched it trail off, tried to retrieve it, wanted to, but hadn’t the strength, and it was gone.

In my lucid moments, in between the drugs, when the pain started to strengthen and I had a scrap of energy and I could feel things, I felt sad, and scared. I didn’t understand death but I thought it meant I was going away. I didn’t want to go away and I definitely didn’t want any more pain. I wanted the life I once had. I didn’t understand what was happening to me.

At times, when the drugs weakened, I could feel things, emotions. I recognized one as fear and I thought I would cry. Nobody could help me. Not even my dad. Then the pain would seize me. There would be the medicine and then the hazy numbness, and the exhaustion, and I would fall back into the darkness.

I asked my dad what dying was like? He hadn’t answered at first but then after he took me in his arms, he told me the people went to a peaceful, beautiful place and the people that lived there were happy.

That made me feel better.

When Christmas was but a day away, through my blurred senses, I noticed I was feeling different. Even with the pain meds my body ached. I was used to vague thoughts forming in a cloud of numbness but now they were even more sluggish, and harder to find. I couldn’t move. I felt myself sinking. I tried to open an eye, got it to a slit, and saw the blurry, colored lights. It was the last willful thought I experienced as the pain moved back behind the haze, somewhere in the background, and the darkness came over me.

I’d wanted to make it to Christmas because I thought it would make my dad happy. Even in my medicinal state of numbness I felt myself holding on, willing myself to live. Now, the exhaustion was too deep. My body ached from my effort and I felt myself releasing, slipping away, falling deep into the darkness.

I found myself floating above the room. The machines lined up behind my bed looking down on the frail body. The ugly tube, which hurt me when the pain meds weren’t right, was still stuck down my throat. My hair was matted.

I didn’t recognize my empty body. My complexion was a sickly mix of grey and white. My arms and hands were thin. The body that once was mine, didn’t stir.

I don’t even recognize myself dad. Thank you for staying with me.

My dad got up from his chair and stepped over to the bed and bent to me. He was calling my name. He made a phone call, ran to the door, back to the bed. The nurse came rushing in. My dad was kneeling beside me, holding my hand, talking to me quietly. I think he was crying.

Don’t cry dad. I am sorry I didn’t make it until Christmas. I really tried. I just couldn’t hold on any longer. I was too weak. It hurt too much. When I let go, the pain went away and I actually felt myself leaving my body. It felt like floating. My pain was left behind in the body.

Please, I want you to be happy for me. I will miss you but it doesn’t hurt anymore! Can you believe it? I feel so good. The pain is gone.

I never thought I would feel this good again.

I have energy. I want to play. In the distance I see a playground and there are a lot of kids my age laughing, swinging, climbing and playing games. It has been so long. I want to join them. I don’t know how I know but I do know a while ago they were sick, just like me.

I feel so good. I can’t believe I feel this good. And I feel happy.

I can’t believe I have this new life.

I want you to be happy for me, and for yourself.

I see grandma and grandpa on the playground in the distance, walking among the children. They don’t see me waving at them because I haven’t yet finished my crossing. Maybe I will get to see the mom I have never met. This place is so beautiful dad. It is an endless playground on rolling hills.

Please understand. I am sorry, but I want to leave now. I need to join the children, my new friends. I can hear them laughing. They are having so much fun.

Please be happy for me. I will be here waiting for you.

Keep me in your heart, and in a short time we will be together again.

I promise.