Before Martha died, she ordered a wool dragon from King Cole knitting company. It was almost the last thing she did. It was not any more special than any of the other purchases she made for her boy Daniel. Daniel loved dragons and Martha sought them out wherever they were sold.
The other activities Martha completed with her last moments of life sadly only lead her to her death and amounted to her standing on a corner on her way to be waiting for a bus, which arrived much later then scheduled. The lateness was due to the traffic Martha herself caused by winding up beneath a VW Bug. The VW jumped the curb to avoid a squirrel. Some witnesses claim Martha was smeared into Martha flavored jam in the ice-covered gutter. The squirrel was saved and never attempted a street crossing again in what remained of its short life. Most of the other witnesses just screamed then went home and relived the event over and over in their dreams until their own deaths.
Death happens. We shall not regret the life Martha lived or the death that ended it. It is the one thing all living beings can expect to occur at some point. It never occurs at the right time and someone is bound to be inconvenienced by it.
So Martha died.
She did not feel the trolley smashing her body into bits and pieces and was not sad to end up where she went, but those that she left behind felt pain and sadness and disappointment at the unfairness of it all.
Especially her boy Daniel.
The living rarely understand. Death is a necessity, how redundant eternity would be if it were not offered at all.
But Daniel does not care about redundancies. He just wants his mommy back. But all he gets is the forward progression of time, which is a blessing all on its own.
The day after the funeral the post arrived, because that’s what the post does. Daniel looks at the box handed to him by his father. Sad eyed and silent since. The address is to his mother. He looks for permission and his father nods before turning and leaving him alone.
He cuts carefully into the box and finds the bright green hand-knitted dragon, but refuses to let the tears come this time and decides immediately to throw it out.
It’s just a stuffy and he was going to be seven soon and seven-year-olds who lose their mother don’t need stuffies anymore, they just need to get over it and start growing up.
Daniel walks over to the bin, not at all about to cry, and flips the lid up, but before he can toss the toy away, the bright Irish green dragon requests, “Wait a mo, please. Maybe we can work something out.”
Stories 