Widowed Memories

                                              “Widowed Memories”    
The wind was gently caressing my face. As the wind gently passed by, the dried leaves created a soothing hymn. As the hymn continued, my sorrow danced along with it. Each letter I typed brought memories of my husband and I together. My name is Heidi Robinson Masterson. This was a story on how the separation of me and my husband changed my life.
Summer time at a school dormitory, everyone was busy getting out of the dorm, dragging along their stuff along pavement, and looking forward to their vacation. Everyone was busy for their vacation except for a man seated at a patio and was typing at his old busted typewriter. His face was bursting with emotions from all that writing.
“I can’t do it.” he said. “I just can’t!”
He then threw his typewriter to the floor from his table. Coincidentally, a woman was passing by with her stuff and saw what the man had done. She dropped her stuff on the floor and went to see what was happening.
“What happened?” she asked to the man as she helped him pick up the typewriter.
“I am sorry if I got you all worried. It’s just that what I am writing will not matter to no one. It makes no sense writing a story if it matters to no one.” he said.
She then replied, “Nonsense! No story is not worth hearing. What are you writing anyway?” “I want to remember something when I grow old.”
“What’s wrong about that?”
“My life doesn’t have a purpose.”  She then was startle to hear that from him. She then grabbed a chair and sat beside him.
“What happened to you, Cornelius?” she asked.
“Nothing now is what it seems, Heidi. When I got here, it was hard for me to left my dad because of my dreams of pursuing a degree in a university. One day he said to me that education was important for me and that my mother would have been so proud.” Cornelius stopped for a moment. “I miss my mom so much. It was hard for us when she left this world.” A tear fell from his face and then he continued. “Now, I just got the letter from my aunt. It says that my Dad is gone.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that!”
“He passed away along with my hopes and dreams. My life doesn’t have a meaning any more.” Heidi grabbed his hand to comfort him. He then said, “I can’t live with this sorrow. It is too much.” Just as he was about to finish what he was saying, Heidi approached him and hugged him.
“Sssshh! Stop talking. I am here.”
Luis cried for a long time while he lied on the shoulder of Heidi. After all the tears, he stopped for a moment and tried to catch some air.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
“What is it?”
“Can you accompany me to my father’s funeral?” He then paused to wait for a reply.
She looked at his face with a gentle smile and then said, “Of course! I will accompany you.” She then saw a brochure hidden from the piles of papers and old photos. “Luis, what is this?” she asked while pointing at it. Then he quickly took.
“That’s nothing.” he said.
TING! I had just written the last word of the last line.
The next day, Heidi went to Luis’s dorm. Knock, Knock!! She knocked and stood in front of the door where Luis stayed. The door opened and Luis came out. Luis was wearing an old tuxedo.
“I am sorry if I am not wearing fitting attire for the funeral.” she said.
“That’s ok.”
“Why do you wear that old tux? Don’t you have any new ones?” she then asked.
“I have new ones but I like to wear my Dad’s.” he replied.
“Sorry I asked.” she said.  “So, are you ready to go?” she asked.
We rode together at my yellow and black classic Camaro 2009 edition to the funeral. It was not a pleasant sight when we arrive there. All the passengers, who were getting out of their cars, were sad and slowly walked to his father’s house. Then we stepped out of my car and went inside the house.
As they stepped out of the car, all the people were shocked by Luis’s presence.
“Why are they shocked to see you, Luis?” she asked him. She waited for an answer but he did not reply. People could be heard chatting from where they were standing to the inside of the house. They went inside the house. A sudden silence filled the house.  As the silence prolonged, a man approached Luis.
He asked him, “Why are you here, Cornelius? Didn’t you get the message?”
Luis replied with an anger tone in his voice, “Yes, I have received it!”
“Then, what do you want?”
“What I want is to see my father for the last time.” Then Luis looked at the man’s face and said, “You know you can have them all of my father’s treasure. I don’t want anything from it.”
“How dare you accuse your own family from such accusations?”
“You are not my family. My family is dead, all of them. All of you care about is my father’s wealth.” After he said that, Luis grabbed Heidi’s hand and went out of the house.
“What happened? Why do they hate you so much? What is the message they send you? Is it the brochure?” Heidi suddenly asked as they went inside the car. Luis grasped for air. He starred at her for a moment. He could see that she was puzzled at what had happened. She started the car and went off.
As they were in the highway, she then said, “Luis, please answer me.” She stared at him as she was driving. They were about to cross an intersection when suddenly a truck was honking at them.
After that moment, I couldn’t remember what had happened. All I could remember was the truck honking at us and then I woke up in a hospital.
Heidi woke up in a hospital. She tried to move but she could not.
“Don’t move, miss. You need to lie down and rest to regain your strength.” said a nurse staring at her face. “Doctor will see you soon.” She opened the door and let herself out of the room.
“Where is Luis?” she asked herself while she glanced around the room. Then she noticed another bed beside her’s.
“Luis, is that you?” she asked.
“Heidi? Are you alright?” asked Luis.
“My body hurts so badly.” she replied with a grunt on her face. “What happened?” Then Luis bent his head. He then starred at her face.
She then said to him, “Please tell me what happened?”
“Well, we were hit by a truck on our way back to our school.” he replied. “I’m really sorry for what happened to us. I really do. After the accident, I found you barely conscious. I tried to free you but your leg was stuck. Then you fainted. So, I went out of the car to call out for help. Then we were here.” He then paused for a while to wait for her to say something.
“Why are you not answering me?” she the asked.
“I just told you what happened.”
“No. Not about the accident. What I meant was about all the stuff that you didn’t want to share to me, the brochure and the funeral?”
“Oh, that!”
“The past weeks, I had grown fond of you, Luis. I could remember how hard it was for me to talk to you. I had to think of some why to just be with you. When that time came, oh, my heart was filled with gladness. I will always treasure that moment like the time we walk around the park while we are eating French fries and just share our experiences to one another. You were so cheerful, full of happiness. You were optimistic like this one time when I was really sad. You said that everything would be ok and that there is always a silver lining to every dark cloud.” She then stopped for a while. She looked with disappointment at his face. Then she continued.
“Then the other day, you changed. I tried to ask you about the brochure but you didn’t reply. Also the funeral, you never said a word to me. What was that all about?”
“That brochure was an ad about memory – deletion.” he said. “You know how my relatives hated my family. All they cared about was my family’s wealth. They wanted me to forget about my father’s death. Obviously, they knew I was naïve because it was too hard for me to accept like the time my mother died. I tried to forget her. That was why they were all shocked to see me at the funeral.”
“Why can’t you just tell me all about this?” she then asked.
“Because I don’t think you will ever understand it.”
“I would not understand it! Come on, Luis, can’t you just see it. All I ever wanted was to be part of your life. I wanted to have something great in my life.”
“Heidi, can’t you just see that I lost all the good things that have happened to me? Nothing can make me happy anymore.” he said.
“You’re right. You’re right! I am not good for you after all.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No, you just said it. I am not a good thing in your life.”
That was one of the saddest moments that had ever happened to me. The next day, I decided that I wanted to erase him from my memories since he doesn’t care about me anymore. I signed up for a surgery in memory – deletion.
The next day, the doctor approached Heidi and said, “Good morning, Ms. Robinson. I’ve just received your request for memory – deletion. Do you know that there is a high risk for this kind of surgery especially in your condition? This means that it could be fatal for you.”
“I don’t care. I just want the surgery.”
“Heidi, please don’t! I don’t want to have a widowed memory of you.” begged Luis.
“I have already made my decision, Luis.” said Heidi.
“Well then, I will schedule you for surgery today at 6:00pm.” said the doctor.
“Thank you, Doctor.” Heidi replied.
The time for my surgery finally arrived. As I was getting ready for my surgery, I was remembering all my good memories about the time I spent with Luis. I was getting ready to forget him. Luis just stayed in the room to wait for my return.
“Mr. Masterson.” said the doctor as he entered the room.
“Yes, Doctor!” replied Luis.
He looked at the doctor waiting on how the surgery went. He looked at the doctor’s face. He could sense that something was not right.
“Mr. Masterson, I am sorry to tell you that the surgery was a failure.”
“Where is she? What happened?” he asked as tears fell down his cheeks.
“She is in the surgery room. We left her there because the machines are the only ones left to support her. Her body could not cope up with the pressures of the surgery so she has only few minutes to live. ”
“Can I see her?”
“You still have enough time.”
Luis went to the surgery room to see Heidi. He could see her lying down the bed. Her skin was pale. Luis knew that she had only few minutes to live so he grabbed a chair and sat near her bed.
“I’m so sorry, Heidi. I never knew that you liked me that much. I’m sorry that I let this happen to you. You are so special to me. I now know that all you ever wanted is to be with Me.” said Luis as he talked to Heidi. He starred at the machine that showed her heartbeat. Her heartbeat began to decrease. Luis watched closely as her heartbeat began to decline. Suddenly her heartbeat stopped. Luis sobbed as he knew that he would never see her again.
Then he grabbed her right hand, rubbed it gently. He went closer to her ear.
He then whispered, “Heidi, I will always love you.”
Just after he said that, her eyes were starting to move. Her heartbeat began to increase. She started to inhale some air. She began to look at Luis’s eyes.
“Luis!!” she said to him.
“Heidi!!” he cried joyfully to her. “I love you, Heidi.”
“I love you too, Luis. I will always love you.”
From that moment on, we were inseparable. Luis and I had a wonderful life together. Luis said that he would always be with me forever. He proved it to me by taking me out on a date on one of the fanciest restaurant in the city. It was my 24th birthday. We had a wonderful meal together. I could remember how the song, “What a Wonderful World!” was playing the entire time. After dinner, we went outside the balcony to see the view of the city. Then, fireworks began to display. While the fireworks were still there, Luis grabbed my hand and kneeled on one knee. He then asked me to marry him.  It was one of the happiest moments in my entire life. Our wedding was beautiful. We then settled in a house outside of the city. It has a wonderful backyard where we could go there and talk, or wrote a story at our patio.
“What are you writing, Nana?” asked a little boy as I was typing on my old busted typewriter. That little boy was my grandson, Nathan.
“I am writing about a story about how your grandfather and I get together”.
“I miss him, Nana.” said Nathan as he approached me.
“Me too, Nathan. Me too!”
Cornelius died of old age. I miss him a lot. Just before he died, he said that I should keep writing on his old busted typewriter. He couldn’t remember much on what happened. He passed away leaving me his typewriter. I promised that I would always keep it and always write stories. This is the end of the story. Someday, I would meet him again.