President Camacho V. bleachededen

Writing Challenge

Many people remember the firsts in their lives, but what about the lasts. What last has occurred during your life that you now wish you realized at the time, that it was the last?

500 word minimum

This contest has been established due a challenge between President Camacho and bleachededen. Both participants have 7 days to post a writing piece answering the above question. This challenge is for President Camacho and bleachededen only.
After both participants have posted their writing pieces, members can then read, comment, and try to persuade other members to vote for either President Camacho or bleachededen. Please do not enter your vote until both pieces have been posted. Everyone is encouraged to participate in the poll to declare a winner of this challenge between President Camacho and bleachededen.

Before I post, Suzanne, I have a question: Are Camacho and I allowed to comment on our own/each others' pieces/comments members make about our pieces, or are we to post our writing and remain silent until a winner is chosen?

bleachededen wrote:Before I post, Suzanne, I have a question: Are Camacho and I allowed to comment on our own/each others' pieces/comments members make about our pieces, or are we to post our writing and remain silent until a winner is chosen?

I absolutely think you can make comments after you post your work. This will be a discussion like any other. Looking forward to see what you guys come up with. Just want to say one thing about the directions, yes, there is a question to be answered, however, there is nothing in the directions addressing how to answer the question. The writing format is your choice.

Also, if you lose this thread, it is located in the "Fun Stuff" forum.

Good luck!

As this is based on my personal experience, names, including my own, have been shortened or omitted to protect the identities of the people written about herein, as well as to protect my own identity. Localities have also been omitted for the same reason. Please excuse my semi-paranoia. I try to stay anonymous when I can.

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A Last, Fleeting Sense of Innocence, Just Before it is Lost Forever

Life used to be so simple.

Every season had its wonders, and we were never left without hope for something happier to come along. In spring, we waited for school to end so we could have summer. In summer we swam and had picnics and didn't care about anything at all, except who would win the water gun battle that the neighbor kids always started. When the leaves began crisping and turning gold and orange and brown, we raked them and played in them and begrudgingly went back to school, waiting for Halloween, so we could pretend to be super-heroes and get lots of candy. When the season changed again, we played in the snow and crossed our fingers for school cancellations, the closest we ever came to prayer at that age.

The cycle continued that way until I was ten. I began to realize things, things that didn't fit into my carefree world. People leave, and although some aren't gone forever, like my best friend who only moved 40 or so miles away, some of them don't come back. And it is true, what they say, you never know how much you love someone until they're gone.

Rose---- ----- -------- died in a car crash on December 21, 1992. The convertible went under a Mac truck, whose driver was asleep at the wheel. She died instantaneously, the seatbelt taking her head off. Her husband, Dr. E---- --------, suffered from a fractured skull and severe brain damage, and was taken immediately to the hospital.

My parents, who were the closest to next of kin within several states, were at a party in the city when the police came to find them. They were given a police escort to the hospital, where they were told of Rose-----'s death and E----' condition. My brother and I were at home with a babysitter, probably watching movies and eating pizza, tormenting the old lady watching us, who always smelled of perfume and denture paste and clearly preferred my brother over me.

I'm not sure how long my parents waited to tell me, but I do know that at first, I didn't believe it. People don't die when you're that young, you just don't have the mental capacity to handle the idea. This wasn’t the first time someone I knew had died, and my parents had so far tried to shelter me from knowing the details of those deaths, but this was the first death to hit so close to home, my first real reality shock – The people I love will not be here forever, and nothing can change that.

It felt like a dream. It seemed it was just yesterday that my brother was born, and I spent the night at E---- and Rose----'s house, barely sleeping in anticipation of a new family member. We had spent a few weeks of every summer in their cottages on -------- Lake and Lake ----------. They had been present at my parents' first date. They had informed my father of a small fire some teenagers had started in the synagogue parking lot while they were out for a walk. They had always been there for my parents, my brother and me, and suddenly one of them was gone.

I visited the cemetery every day. I talked to Rose---- as though she could still hear me, hoping that she could. I wanted her to know how I was turning out as a person, since she would never get to know. I was naïve and sad, but I believed that she was still there for me, watching me from amongst the quiet underground world of the dead.

E---- spent five months in a rehabilitation center, where he regained his memory and motor skills. When he first arrived and was asked who he was, he announced that he was the head doctor, there to fix all the patients. Eventually he grew stronger and made a full recovery, including most, if not all, of his memory, something no one had expected, and continued to live his life, obviously grateful for the reprieve from death he had been granted. He remarried a few years later, and always seemed to be one of the most jovial men alive, despite the horror he had been through.

I saw him only once while he was recovering, and I believe he was asleep. My brother and I tagged along with our parents who visited him often, but we always stayed in the waiting room playing with our action figures, unaware of any of the tragedy or pain surrounding the clinic. We stood our heroes on the radiator, set up armies of Power Rangers and My Little Ponies on the bookshelves and windowsills. To us it was an adventure, a long drive on a school night to a distant hospital that only held, for us, wonder and amusement.

Eventually the pain became less and less. I visited Rose----'s grave every week, then every month, until I left for college and could only visit on vacations. I hadn't visited for almost a year when I received the worst shock of my life, greater even than her death.

Dr. E---- --------, who had for all of my life been like an uncle or a second father, died of cancer on July 25, 2002, 10 years after Rose----'s death.

My mother told me he was sick when I returned home from school for the summer, two weeks before he died. She did not, however, tell me how sick. I wanted to see him. My mother asked me several times if I was sure, and, bravely, I said "yes" each time.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't.

He was strapped to a hospital bed, asleep, his eyes sunken into his head, wide open. His mouth gaped and hung crooked like a mummy's. His skin was a pale yellow and looked as thin as parchment. His bed had been moved into the first floor living room because he had been waking up at night in the bedroom and falling down the stairs. Each breath he took seemed to use every part of his body, his lungs making a railing noise as his body struggled to finish the breath without shattering. I don't think I breathed for a whole minute.

My mother and L-----, whom he married a few years after Rose----'s death, a wonderful, strong woman, saw my horror, and started talking to me to ease the shock and take my mind from the man I once knew who now lay broken in the middle of the room. I talked amiably, but could not stop my eyes from wandering to look at him, then at the picture of him taken a few years before, back to him, into my lap, avoiding anyone else's eyes to avoid showing the true fear I really felt. This had been my decision, after all, and I couldn't be weak when everyone else was staying so strong.

That image haunted me for days. I couldn't sleep at night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the mummy E----, arms clinging to the bed, eyes staring straight ahead but seeing nothing, mouth wide open swallowing air, and me.

He died a week later. I was eating a piece of bread when my mother called.
"He's gone," she said. I could barely hear her.
"What? How is he?" I think I was in disbelief.
"He's gone, ------. He died."
"When?" I grabbed the back of a chair for support.
"About half an hour ago. You said you wanted to know when it happened, so I called."
I nodded, but she couldn't see that. I didn't know what else to say. I told her I'd go to the house to give my regards. I looked at the piece of fluffy white bread crumbled in my hand. I knew my face was as white as the bread. I couldn't even think of finishing it, although I hadn't eaten all day. I threw it out, disgusted at myself for doing something so mundane when E---- was dead.

I arrived just as the people from the funeral home did, in time for me to see him, dead, his lifeless body exactly as it had been the week before, only his skin was no longer yellow, but the color of storm clouds, ashen and frightening. I tried not to look but was morbidly compelled to anyway. I could barely stand to be there. I was still in shock. Everyone around me was tearful, sad, but already moving on. I couldn't cry. I couldn't think. I was horrified. I felt as though part of me was dead, too. The part that knew how to be strong. Ten years had passed and I had just barely begun to cope with the fact that Rose---- was dead, and now E---- was dead, too.

My father had sat by him until he died, but he still seemed stable, comforting E----‘s new widow, reminiscing about the great man who had been his closest friend.

I broke the next night, when, for the first time in 19 years, I saw my father cry. He read his eulogy to my mother and me, his voice breaking every third sentence, a sound I will never forget for as long as I live. My father had always been the strongest man in my life, as invincible as Superman. His own father had died a month before Rose----, but even then he hadn’t let us see him cry. I had assumed that he never would. But now I saw that he, too, was vulnerable, fragile, and I knew I would never be able to see him the same way ever again, and knew that if even he wasn’t unflappable, then no one was, and some of my faith in myself went down the drain in the shower that night.

I visited Rose---- alone one last time, after the funeral, before they put E----'s body into the grave beside her. It hurt to look at the contraption towering over the graves, blaspheming the only place I had ever considered to be holy.
As we left the cemetery, I remembered playing there as a child, riding our bikes around the headstones, trying our best to scare one another. We didn't know what life was like then; we were innocent, ignorant, happy. I looked once more at E----'s new home, the freshly dug earth next to Rose----, and finally began to weep.

I knew then that I could never go back.

The last time my parents were beyond judgment.

We’ve been there while we’re young. We are filled with awe over two adults who hold all the magic, mystery, power, and fruits of life. Who can produce and expel. Who can gift and withhold. Two towering, omnipotent, and omniscient gods whose ways are too far enlightened and removed from our own to figure out and so avoid our serious judgment.

To describe a father at that young age a child might draw you a picture of a wise, authoritative family gladiator whose temper was not to be tested and whose word was final. A threat to mischief, Mom’s ultimate weapon, and above all powerful. A child might paint his mother’s portrait on the same mythological canvass as that of the father; more familiar yet still omniscient and strong. Caring and motivating. Love.

The image fades. As time passes we learn more about ourselves as we grow. We learn more about our parents.

The ideal we have in our heads of our parents shatters as we learn the limitations of these two individuals who we took for granted as knowing everything, being virtuous beyond comparison, and having the physical strength to punish us when we misbehaved. To see weakness. Magic crushed against the weight of reality. Disappointment and fear. A foundation of knowledge and a faith system cracked beyond repair. If one ideal has fallen, what of the others? What of love?

Some children can remember the exact instance when the view of their parents changed for the first time. It’s usually in some small act, sometimes it’s on a grander scale. It’s a passage of life that everyone must pass through. It’s the ultimate test for a parent. The test of their own child. To be judged by their own children who they helped shape and who contain in them, themselves. A semi-reflection.

I can’t remember when I first started to judge my parents as people. The magic for me slowly went the way of Santa and later Christ. There wasn’t a single pivotal moment I can recall.

I know that it has taken a lot longer than I thought it would to completely get a grasp on the two people who have shared my life more than any others. Who have spent more time with me than any others and who have invested so much into me. I can see parts of them in myself.

As time passes I’m able to replace the childhood picture… brush stroke by brush stroke. Trading the dream for reality and making a masterpiece out of a cartoon.

It has taken me 28 years to reach my current point of growth, self realization, and ability to pass my unworthy and incomplete judgments. I’m still trying to figure out who these people really are. To acknowledge that they are people and not godlike beings. To know they are strapped with physical and emotional needs like any other human. They become strangers almost in a sense. It’s a quest to find out who they really are. To find out who I am. To find truth and self worth.

Great piece of work Bleachededen. I concede.

Um, wow, thanks...your piece is very good, too, very meaningful, and touches on some of the same realizations I made in mine. It is a very bewildering moment when you first realize your parents are human beings like any other, with feelings and problems of their own, and not all powerful and beyond reproach, or without faults or with faults you may never have noticed. I find it interesting and humbling, in a way, that we each chose similar "last" moments for this challenge.

Thank you for the challenge, also, as it brought me to look at an old piece of writing that dealt with that last sense of innocence I wrote on, and to add to it after several years of experience. I hope you learned something, too. You are a worthy opponent, sir, and it was a pleasure to have "done battle" with you. I will thank your post, as well, because I think your effort deserves it, and also because I understand the feelings you put forth. Well played, sir!

Both pieces of creative writing were wonderful and made me pause and think of how they relate to my own life and experiences. Did you both enjoy opening up and sharing these stories?

(As soon as possible I'll roll out our new blogs so that people can really share their hearts and souls with the world. What both of you wrote would be great for personal blogs. Bare with me - I'll do the blogs soon.)

Bleachededen, you really did a great job. My father recently died and your description of the dying process is accurate and painful to think back on. Your words really stirred my emotions so thank you for sharing.

President Camacho, I can really relate to your piece. Far too long ago I was forced to realize my father was merely a human being complete with character flaws and weaknesses. While reading your contribution I found myself wanting to hear specifics of what you went through with your parents. Maybe in the future you can share some of your experiences with us.

I want to thank Suzanne for her help in running this challenge.

Thank you, Chris. I am sorry about your father, but I'm glad you found some resonance in my piece -- I always hope that what I write can somehow help others, even if it is fictional, although this piece is sadly not.

Thank you, as well, Suzanne, for encouraging us and for setting up a "battle ground," so to speak. I'm glad you took interest and are a great moderator.

President Camacho, and bleachededen:

I wish I could thank both of you twice for your stories. Your stories have exceeded my expectations for this challenge. By challenging each other, you challenged yourselves. Both stories have touched me, for I have felt the loss of a loved one, and as a mother of teenagers, I realize that I no longer hang the moon for my children. I applaud both of you for sharing such personal experiences.

Please, do not concede, you are both winners. What started out as a fun, quirky challenge, has resulted in two beautiful and heart felt stories. I hope all members reading your stories will be inspired by your words, and, because of your stories, wish to write their own. It is my hope that the "last" challenge between President Camacho and bleachededen will become a contest that the members of BookTalk will enjoy participating in.

In appreciation for your contributions and for your participation, it would please me very much, if you would both visit the “books available for awards” and choose a book as an award. Please PM Chris with your selected book, your full name and address.

Again, thank you for sharing such memorable pieces of writing.