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Jan 26, 2006 23:17


Maureen

Nealy Bowden

She has silver-gray hair that is usually up in a bun. A few stray pieces fall down and sweep the side of her face. Her face is old, with wrinkles that do not skew her beauty. Her eyes are pale blue. She has a very tight face and a beautiful smile that opens up to reveal straight, healthy teeth. She loves going for long bike rides, and picking daisies in the field a few miles up the road. Daisies are her favorite flower. On her first date with her husband, thirty seven years ago, he told her she looked like a daisy with her white pearls and dress, and yellow floppy hat. Every morning she puts her newly collected daisies in a thin vase on the center of their quaint dining room table. Her husband, James, tells her every morning, as he walks out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, how beautiful she is, how much he loves her. They are a happy couple. They have been happy for years. Maureen and James don't watch TV, they play cards and read books and talk and think, and still make love. Maureen loves James more than all the daisies in all the fields in the world. James loves Maureen more than all of his happy afternoons spent fishing with their son, Marcus. Maureen and James are happy, so is Marcus; but, Maureen has a secret. Maureen is dying. Maureen has an evil black cancer that has hooked itself onto her lungs and spread throughout her pure, beautiful insides, jeopardizing her life. Maureen is scared, she doesn't show it. She worries because she does not know what will happen when she dies. James says, that is all the fun of life and death - the intrigue, the unknown. James is not scared for Maureen, he believes she will find heaven, or nirvana, or whatever is meant to be found. James only worries that Maureen will feel pain. James will miss Maureen. Marcus doesn't know, nobody knows, - only Maureen and James. It is in the same way that they share their happiness, between the two of them, that they share their sorrows. They are planning her funeral. Maureen wants daisies all around.
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