There is a creek in the little valley of the two hills that south 68th street runs through. Where the road runs over the trickling stream, there is a clearing in the tangling trees that dance in the stiff but subtle late October breeze. In that clearing stands a deer, whose antlers reach outward and forward. They are sharp, like a crown of thorns. His tines stretch for the bluebird sky. He carries these massive antlers with ease. He looks toward the road, toward me. His neck bulges with thick strands of muscle. He stomps his foot in the frost bitten leaves. His breath rises and vanishes like a ghost, or a coward. He sees me. We stand, I, in his intense black eyes, the predator and him, the prey. In our mutual gaze, I find serenity, though he has already come to the conclusion I am a threat. I expected him to take off, flashing his brilliant white tail at me as he bounds away with such beauty and grace, He doesn’t. He is the king of the forest. Master of all he sees. He is brave and I envy him.

The sighting came fresh off of a night of rampant trick or treaters. We went from house to house, collecting every single bar of rich smooth chocolate and sugary fruit mockery that left or mouths as sweet as life itself. When we made it home, we poured out our triple-bagged grocery bags filled to the brim with sugary delights on the floor of our dimly lit living room contrasted against the cool dark night. We’d categorize our candies into neatly stacked towers or large mountains reaching to the sky lights above us. It was tradition among us to formally trade away candy for other candies we wished to consume. It was a serious business. We acted as if we were the leaders of the free world, the masters of our own destiny. I wished I could’ve savored those moments we had shared a little longer, or at least I told myself to savor every detail. I miss the silent care free nights and sugary highs that triggered our overwhelming joy. We’d brush our teeth, ridding away the sugary stained teeth and smelly sticky fingers. We would lay beneath the cozy covers with joy in our hearts, our minds began to come off of the sugar high we had been riding into the night. And we drifted to sleep, with dreams wilder than what our own fantasies could conjure. My father would make sure we were asleep and I would ask where my mother was. He would say that she was with Grandma. As consciousness slipped away, I would not pick up on the subtle worry traced in his syllables. I wouldn’t dwell on the way his voice trailed off. I noticed his smile though, as he playfully patted my head and left my room to the dimly lit hallway, closing the door softly behind him, leaving me with darkness and dreams. Who would have known this would be the last of my innocence.   

I don’t recall waking up that morning. I don’t remember what cartoon Melanie and I were soaked up in. I imagine us dining on skittles and reese's peanut butter cups for breakfast but I couldn’t tell you. It was never important to me know those things. To reflect on my past was a waste of my time. Days back then seemed copy and pasted like the cookie cutter condos where she used to reside.

But I do recall my father standing in the doorway with his familiar childish grin that appears when he’s with his children. I found the idea that my father was intimidating to others so incredibly strange. Now I can see, with his silent strong figure. His hairline slightly receding, large bags beneath his eyes, wrinkles spread down his face. His glasses often collected sawdust as did the gray whiskers that colonized his cheeks. His hands are blistered and scarred, worn from years of winter winds and summer suns and hard work handling plywood and 2X4’s. He wore the famous Theodore Roosevelt quote around his body language like a winter coat. People don’t really see my father smile either, but that moment he beamed with child enthusiasm, still wearing his camouflage pants. His wool sweater had become slightly untucked. 

“Erik, There’s a big buck just down the road!”

And just like that, I found myself kneeling in between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat of my father’s work van, searching out the window toward the king of the forest. My brother, Luke, sat down next to me sat in an overwhelming silence, hiding his eyes out the window, staring past the deer and twisted trees.

I would find out why 20 minutes later standing in the kitchen. My father would tell me what he had told Luke and that we were going to visit her to say goodbye. I would cry in the shower while getting ready to go. I was confused. I knew she was sick but no one told me she had slipped into a comma. No one told me that there was a tumour on her lungs and it was growing. That the infection had spread to her liver. No one told me about she what going to die.
 

I only remember the silence in the car ride to the hospital. I sat in the middle seat, Luke to my right and Melanie to my left. Luke was listening to music on his ipod. He white knuckled the device with his right hand and twirled the headphone chords with his left hand. He hid his eyes from us in the withering corn fields that scrolled along the window. Melanie held her sketchbook close to her chest. She looked to the ink stained page with pained eyes, red, wet and puffy. I watched her pen move up and down, fluid like a cellists bow, leaving a stale silence that drifted along with my grandfather’s and fathers conversation, quiet and cautious. I would sit with my hands together, staring out the dirty windshield to blue skies and an almost empty freeway. I wouldn't even attempt to prepare myself for what was to come. Preparing for the future was a stranger to my naive little brain.

My father’s father dropped us off at the revolving doors of the hospital lobby. We trudged through the same types of doors that we once spun around an extra time just for fun. The lobby smelt like a disinfectant wipe, as if they wash the maroon carpets with hand sanitizer and had covered the windows with bleach.

We progressed up the stairs to the balcony above the lobby. My eyes were glued to the intricate golden design sprawled out on the maroon carpet as we followed the labyrinth of closed doors and empty hospital rooms. I remember passing a pair of nurses laughing together. I wondered how they had the audacity to smile on a bright beautiful fall day like today.   

We reached the corridor that seemed to stretch a mile long. I remember the hallway seemed to darken, the only light seemed to come from her room, a spotlight of natural light shimmered from the open doorway. I imagined fog rolling through the light in a noir fashion. My unsettling feet trudged through the quicksand that was time. My hands began to tremble at my side. My Brother and sister in front of me, My father at me side. My heart desperately tried to find a way out of my sternum, like a rabid dog caged, afraid of the world so still.

We drew closer to the door. I remember seeing bodies standing still through the doorway, heads bow down. No one moved. No one talked. No one seemed to breath. I drew closer yet, as the doorway expanding slowly. I saw my uncles and aunts. My cousins. Their eyes staring at her in front of them. They didn’t notice when we entered in frame. They were in their minds. Opening memories like their favorite novels. The saw her smile again. Someone sniffled. They held bouquets of flowers in their laps. Get well balloons swayed uselessly in the corner, casting shadows and dancing along the blandly decorated walls. I saw the foot of her bed. I saw her feet. My heart stopped.

I walked to the doorway at the pace of a sloth swimming through mercury. My family found my mother and hugged her in the delicate air surrounding us. I did not. My eyes fixed on her. Her eyes were closed. Her skin was pale. She looked so small. Tubes trailed from her mouth to machines humming next to her bed. I saw her heart beat slowly, a beep for every pulse. It beeps every 5 seconds. Her chest rose and fell with the hums of the machine next to her. The breaths were so forced. Here lips, cold and still, were stuck in a painful expression. I would ask myself what kind of torture this was, even though I knew that machine was the only thing keeping her alive in this moment. My Grandmother was slowly dying in front of me. I panicked. I wanted to scream. I wanted her to wake up. To smile down at me the way she always does. I wanted her to give me her world famous hugs, as she would hold me so tight and sweetly say “I want to squeeze your stuffings out.” I wanted her to tell me that everything was alright. That she was alive and well and would be there for me forever. But nothing was alright. My perfect childhood fantasy was under siege by life. She was hanging on by a thread, and there was nothing I could do. So I ran. I ran away. My little feet pitter pattered down the hall as I cried. Tears streaming down my face and snot running down my nose. Through my tear tinted vision, I found a couch in the hallway, were I would sit down, head in my hands, and sob. I don’t remember thinking about running away. Some primitive instinct took over the controls to my weak mind and forced my legs to sprint away. It’s something i'm ashamed for. Instead of being there for my mother, for my family, or for my Grandmother, I ran. I abandoned them in their time of need. I was weak and selfish. I was scared. Later on through questionable periods of my life, I’ll stay up late some nights thinking of how she’d react to my actions. Would she resent me? Some nights I can’t help thinking that she would.

I sat there for what seemed like an eternity. My father somehow materialized on the couch next to me. He place his hand on my shoulder but he would not speak and for the first time in my life, I saw my father cry. He was saddened but relieved to be out of that room. We sat and sniffled the snot rolling down our nostrils in unison.
Breaking the silences with his clumsy voice, He suggested that we take a walk around. I would nod. From there we strolled through the dull hallways. We didn’t say anything. I’d like to think my father was thinking of sentences to comfort me. Things like “Everything happens for a reason” or “She’ll be in a better place soon” or “She loves you”. But he didn’t. He choose to let the silence stay. And from that silence, I got to meet pain, like really meet it, for probably the first time. We conversed in my mind about death. I would learn of its finality and its inevitability. Perhaps right then in that exact situation, that was what I really needed.

I soon found myself outside the hospital walls, past the parking lot, and walking around the pond they had on the property. There was a stream that glistened in the sun that shines above us. The trickling stream fed into the pond before me and a small bridge towered over it. On the other side of the pond was a gazebo painted white. It brought upon a memory so sweet to see. We were sitting in the gazebo, having a picnic in the shade hiding from the summer sun. We snacked on sandwiches and cookies that fed my never ending smile. My Grandmother would ask me what I wanted to be what I grew up.

“An astronaut!” I declared proudly.

She would smile and tell me she loved me to the stars and back and play with my short curly hair that closely resembled her’s.

But there I sat, years from then, watching a pair of ducks circle around the pond. A small flock of geese stood on the shore basking in the sunlight. Panfish swam quickly in the shallows as the sun shines off of the ripples long the shore where frogs still sat, hopping about in the mud as bugs weakly flew over the surface. I watched a bee float a little too close to the surface of the clear turquoise water. She was too weak to make it to the otherside of the pond and she nose dived into the water, creating a very insignificant ripple in the pond. She fought for a moment of per instinct to escape, but soon, weakened from fighting, she sat still afloat the dark water. She floats freely for a moment with no plans. No food to find. No need to survive. I watch her until a flash of scales and an explosion, and she was gone. The frogs hadn’t even noticed. The ducks wouldn’t swim to investigate what had become of the poor little bee. The geese wouldn’t flick their long necks toward the water. Why take notice in something that happens everyday? Geese don’t fight the crane who eats frogs and fish along the shore. They’d continue to fluff their feathers and soak up the sun for as long as they could.

My father and I walked to the bridge above the stream. We would lean on the rail, watching the stream flow away from us, through the tall marsh grass and rocks into the pond that sprawled with life and death. In the background stood the hospital. A wall of tinted windows towered above the parking lot, its shadow inching closer to us with every passing minute. Her room was within view, but I have no way of knowing which room was hers, which right then was fine by me. I couldn’t go into that room, not with her like that.

“I wish we had a couple fishing poles.” My dad glanced at me with a smile. He knew how much I loved to fish and for a moment, my eyes light up with the idea of casting a line into the depths. But she also knew how much I loved to fish. I clothes my eyes. I can see the lake. Spencer lake glowed green in the calm early morning breeze. My Brother and I sat together at the end of the pier, sweatshirts on to protect ourselves from the cool summer morning. Our sandals dangled above the water carelessly. Our fingers stained with dirt and slime and smelt of recent fish. Dirt from the worm container collected under our nails. Regardless, we held honey buns with our bare hands, not thinking of sanitation. Steam rose of the water as the sun shined upon it. Distant splashes of carp rolling excited us. We watched our lines carefully to see if they would move, indicating a fish had found our worm wadded up on our hook. We had it down to a science, chumming the water with bread and bits of worm. We whispered to each other, careful not to scare any carp gliding through the water around us. We’d watch bass, bluegill and perch swim past our feet. We kept another rod next to us and cast it to them, competing to see who could catch the fish first. The smart ones swam away, but we could easily manage to catch the dumb ones.
We got up early for this, much early then any kids did our age. We woke up buzzing with excitement, we would sneak up the stair to grab a juice box and a honey bun and step out the door to the deck overlooking the towering pines and lake. Pine needles stained the air as we gathered our gear. We were the only ones out in the morning, well almost. My grandmother beat us to it, no matter how early we got up. We’d tell her good morning and she’d take a break from her book and give us each a kiss and would tell us good luck. Sometimes, she would find it more interesting to watch us then read her book. When either of us caught a fish, She would cheer with love and enthusiasm that made us smile brightly with pride. To this day I’ll still look toward her chair when I catch a fish, expecting a smiling so sweet and contagious to shine down on me, but I’m greeted with nothing but the shadows of pine trees swaying gently.

I open my eyes again, my vision greeted by the small pond that sit before me. I won’t know how much time has passed, but the shadow is covering more than half of the parking lot now as the sun was beginning to set. A breeze has joined the ensemble of life before me. A little oak tree, no more than a sampling only planted months before shutters in the wind. What little leaves he has are beginning to change. And as if the wind had blown him into view like a leaf, a brilliant male cardinal fluttered into view and sat in the small little tree. I looked to the cardinal with awe. My dad sees him too and we exchange looks with each other, and look the cardinal’s way again.  He seemed to be looking at us too, staring at us with his intense black eyes. He sang a song at us and flapped his wings and fluttered toward the hospital. My dad and I looked to each other again. We were under a shared impression that she had wanted to see us.

We found ourselves walking the same hallway. It seemed brighter than what I remember it being. Perhaps it was due to the artificial lighting that wasn’t there before. Perhaps it was something else. We passed the couch from before. The tears I wiped on the arm were gone now. There was little evidence I was ever there. I walk to the doorway with firm footing. I stood at the doorway again, heart beating intensely as I looked to the hospital bed. She hadn’t moved an inch since I had left. Her breathing still forced and steady. I choke back a sob. My mother looks at me in the doorway, rushes over and hugs me closely with the same love that I find in her hugs. I’ll tell my mother that I’m sorry. She’ll squeeze me tighter.

Together we’ll travel to her bedside 3 feet away. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I’ll look to her nightstand. ‘Get well’ cards are placed upright next to the vase of red roses beside her. Her necklace sat in front of the cards, shimmering gold chain with a charm at the end. The charm is a brilliant red bird with a stare that's fierce and somewhat kind. It was a cardinal, her favorite bird.   

“Hey mom,” My mother began softly, “Erik’s right here.”

I reach for her limp cool hand, still soft in my fingers. I’ll hold it like fine china. My thumb moves back and forth in her palm. What do I say to someone who was dying? Do I tell her how much she means to me? Do I recall the memories we share? Do I tell her that I will miss her?

“I love you.” I said, crying in my mother's arms. 

She would die a little more than an hour later on October 29th. It was my fathers birthday. We would celebrate it silently with pizza and cake in family area. My father was against it, but we were a family. We would always celebrate the things we still have.

6 years later, and this day still haunts me. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about it at least once. I’ve grown so much from my 10 year old self that I often wonder if she would recognize me. I wonder how she would like these changes. For the most part, I think she would. I’ve learned to value the same things she does. I have learned to love and value fine arts, music, knowledge, animals, and the well being of others. I know I will never be as kind as her, which isn’t hard to see. No one was as kind as her. I really wish she was still here with us. I have so many questions I need to ask her. I want to describe to me the different worlds she has seen. I want to create paintings with her and tell me stories from her childhood, things my young mind for some idiotic reason didn’t bother to ask, but that mind is far away from me now, lost in the scattered wrappers of past Halloween Nights. I know it’s selfish to wish for these things. Her time had come and gone whether I liked or not. I'm still struggling with this fact. But I know she’s still alive, living somewhere in little cardinal shaped packages we see every now and then.