Our swing (short Story)

Delaney Megahan

Mrs. Belden

Honors English 1

October 15th, 2014

Our Swing

People say cancer controls your life, but I don’t let it control mine. It might be able to take me over and end my life but I am fighting my hardest to stay alive. The one person who keeps me fighting and fighting my hardest is my soul mate, my other half, the love of my life, my wife. I will keep fighting until I can no longer fight. Until I can no longer breathe. Until I feel I fought my hardest and its time to grab Gods hand, feel him pick up and then I rise.

I walk into the doctors office. If the scans show no improvement of the cancer dying down what am going to say to Mary? There’s no cure and she knows it. She checks on me every hour during the night to make sure I’m still breathing. I see Dr. Autumn every week, this started in June and it’s now July. She said the cancer is spreading like a wild fire. Mary didn’t take that very well…

“Hi Kreg, how are you feeling today?”

“Besides cancer almost being everywhere in my body, like a million bucks”

“Have you told Mary about your time limit yet?”

“I don’t think the thought of your husband only having about a week to live would settle well.”

“Okay, but she needs to know sooner or later.”

We head towards the CAT scan room, the doctors office is very clean, all the walls are a baby blue color and the office smells like cough drops. We then enter the CAT scan room, it makes me cringe. The scanning process takes about an hour. You would think just laying down for an hour and no one disturbing you would be nice, but its not when its over and you get bad results. So far it is in my liver, brain, kidney, and colon. I am doing chemo but it just doesn’t seem worth the pain if I’m going to die anyway, but Mary insists I continue. You can’t not listen to the women you have loved for 40 years. Once the scan is done I head home and am told that the results will be in by tomorrow morning. When I get home the first thing I do is go outside. We have a 100 Year old hickory tree in our backyard. We attached a bench seat swing to ropes and tied it around a high branch. It is the most peaceful and beautiful spot. If I could, I would just die on my swing looking over the countryside, relaxing and enjoying the view with no worry in the world. Mary comes outside and sits right next to me. She is the most beautiful women in the world, with her dark brown hair and big brown, gentle eyes. I knew when I met her she was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

“What did Dr. Autumn say?”

“We won’t get the results back till tomorrow morning. How was your day?”

“Okay. It was good. Kreg we’ll make it through this, I was looking at stuff online and they said 80% of people make it. Have you asked Autumn if she knows a time limit?”

“No, she said that I have nothing to worry about. No need to worry.”

This is one reason why I can’t tell her. As long as I spend as much of my time with her as I can we both will be happy. We sit for a while on the swing and admire the quietness. When it started

getting dark we headed inside our small but warming house. Lately, Mary has been cooking like Betty Crocker. I can’t wait to eat dinner every night. The thought of not eating with her every night, or staring into her eyes before I go to bed makes my heart ache. But I can’t tell her that or she will get a hint I don’t have that much longer with her.

I wake up to her staring at me, I smile and gradually get up and start to head for the kitchen. Before I make it out of the room she says,

“If something happens I don’t know what I would do without you.”

I look straight into her eyes and say

“I am going nowhere”

she smiles at me with a small warming smile.

“How about we go and do something today? You love going to art museums we can go to one today!”

“You aren’t very fond of art museums, are you okay?”

“I am totally fine I just thought we would do something fun today.”

“Okay, off to the art museum!”

It felt like we stayed at the museum for a millennium, it was interesting but I was just happy to see Mary having a good time. The museum is 3 stories of all types of art lining the white walls in the bright rooms. She just admired all the work then we went out to get ice cream at our favorite ice cream shop “Missouri’s Finest”. It’s where we first met. I know an ice cream shop doesn’t sound romantic to meet the love of your life, but when you see and right then and there know

you want to spend the rest of your life with them, it doesn’t really matter. We then head home. When we got home I went straight to be I was exhausted.

I woke up to the sounds of the birds chirping, thats one positive to living in the country even though it is 6 in the morning. I layed in bed thinking about what we should do today, I think I might tell Mary my time limit. I look around our room. Our dresser is directly in front of our bed with our wedding pictures. Theres one picture of Mary and I sitting on our swing looking out to the country while the sun’s setting. Maybe I will paint a sign to hang on our swing that says “Our Swing” in orange, yellow and red. I will go out and get it today. I get up and get dressed. I then go to the kitchen and get a cup of coffee. Cause the best way to waking up is folgers in my cup. After I have my coffee I head to a hardware store and buy a wooden sign, paint brushes, and paint. When I get home Mary is still asleep so I start painting my sign. The first coat of paint is a misty grey, I let it sit for an hour. Then I start painting the “our swing” in orange, red and yellow. It reminds me of a sunset. That takes about another hour to sit so I am totally done by 10am . I check on Mary and she is awake. I tell her to come outside when she is ready. I then quickly rush to the swing. I set the sign on the swing and sit right beside it. I am so excited to see her face. I then feel a sharp pain in my chest and my body feels weak and slow. The last thing I remember is slowly closing my eyes to the quietness and beauty of the country. If only I stayed long enough to see Mary’s beautiful eyes and her reaction to my surprise. If only I told her my limited time so we could of spent more time together. If only...