In most ways there were no outward changes since Beth was diagnosed. She was, perhaps, ever-so-slightly less present when the conversation turned to the weather or who said what to whom. On the other hand, her blue eyes had never looked quite so attentive as they did then – to heart-felt exchanges and simple kindnesses. She welcomed visitors warmly when they came to call unexpectedly, but seemed to be anxious for them to be on their way, as well.
Beth had other things to do – things that could only be attended to in solitude. She spent most of her time daydreaming. It seemed important to her to go over the years, one by one, collecting the important moments, the beautiful moments, the meaningful moments. There were so many – and she worried there would not be time to recapture them all. The first kiss she shared with Billy Nelson in the cloakroom when she was in third grade. The blue gown she wore to the prom when she was seventeen. The way Snyder’s field looked one summer day covered in yellow coreopsis. The mist rising off Harper Lake on a cool September morning.
She took each memory and spread it across the expanse of her mind, and was carried to another time and place. Beth heard it, tasted it, felt every nuance until the memory was as real as the experience had been. Then she took each memory, rolled it carefully up like the ribbons of a rainbow, and arranged it with the others in little drawers in her mind so she would be ready to meet the end with her affairs in order.
THE END
I wrote the piece above when the Kandinsky picture was given as a daily prompt in my freewriting group. Every day we must write something using the prompt given.