Cards

She opened her eyes to the brightness of the room. She'd dozed off again. She shuffled herself into a more comfortable position slowly and carefully. The TV was still on from earlier. She'd had it on for company.

She wished she wasn't so tired but it couldn't be helped.

She took as deep a breath as she could and picked up the pen. In front of her, a task. She needed to get it done. It was a surprise; she hoped, a wonderful surprise for the ones she loved.

Surprises were hard, she was finding out. She was enjoying looking forward. Her days were long, spent as they were in the same place, but her mind travelled far. She slept lots which she hated but she dreamt vividly, and her dreams were full of places that her mind wanted to take her, a great distance from where she was.

Inevitably, looking forward also involved looking back too and she had some wonderful memories. She reminisced about family holidays with Robbie, Lara and Molly, her three beautiful teenage children and Andy, her rock. She had banks of photos on her phone and one of her favourite things to do was scroll through them, looking at all their faces, the brightness of life shining back at her. It made her happy, so happy! But she often ended up tearful.

She tried to be positive and so, she looked to the times she'd not yet lived in her mind's eye and indulged in imagining the scenes: weddings, birthdays, graduations, grandchildren. The creamy pearls of existence and her sharing in them.

She was grateful for many things, many people. She was especially grateful for the help of her new friend, Gladys. She'd written a thank you card already for her. She could tell that Gladys knew it was for her when she'd handed it over.

She was trying to write as many as she could. Cards. Time was running out but her words weren't. As long as she had life to breathe and strength to write, she would complete some every day. She had a stash of them already.

She winced.

It hurt, writing cards that she'd never see opened.

***

366 words

I wrote this last night after watching terrible reality TV but something about one of the stories on there touched me, about a boy whose mother died of cancer but wrote cards for her children to open on special occasions into the future.

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