A woman and a fork

A woman and a fork

This woman was diagnosed with a terminal illness and had been given three months to live. So as she was getting her things "in order," she contacted her Pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes.

She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what outfit she wanted to be buried in. Everything was in order and the Pastor was preparing to leave when the young woman suddenly remembered something very important to her. "There's one more thing," she said excitedly. "What's that?"came the Pastor's reply. "This is very important," the young woman continued. "I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand." The Pastor stood looking at the young woman, not knowing quite what to say. "That surprises you, doesn't it," the young woman asked. "Well, to be honest, I'm puzzled by the request," said the Pastor.

The young woman explained. "My grandmother once told me this story, and from that time on I have always tried to pass along its message to those I love and those who are in need of encouragement. In all my years of attending socials and dinners, I always remember that when the dishes of the main course were being cleared, someone would inevitably lean over and say, 'Keep your fork'. It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming... like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful, and with substance! So, I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder 'What's with the fork?' Then I want you to tell them, 'Keep your fork ... the best is yet to come.'

The Pastor's eyes welled up with tears of joy as he hugged the young woman good-bye. He knew this would be one of the last times he would see her before her death. But he also knew that the young woman had a better grasp of heaven than he did. She had a better grasp of what heaven would be like than many people twice her age, with twice as much experience and knowledge. She KNEW that something better was coming.

At the funeral people were walking by the young woman's casket and they saw fork placed in her right hand. Over and over, the Pastor heard the question, "What's with the fork?" And over and over he smiled.

During his message, the Pastor told the people of the conversation he had with the young woman shortly before she died. He also told them about the fork and about what it symbolized to her. He told the people how he could not stop thinking about the fork and told them that they probably would not be able to stop thinking about it either. He was right. So the next time you reach down for your fork let it remind you, ever so gently, that the best is yet to come. Friends are a very rare jewel, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share a word of praise, and they always want to open their hearts to us. Show your friends how much you care. Remember to always be there for them, even when you need them more. For you never know when it may be their time to "Keep your fork."

Cherish the time you have, and the memories you share...being friends with someone is not an opportunity but a sweet responsibility.


And keep your fork.....


Author unknown

War Babies

Who will suffer these little ones?
Alone at this tender age
Robbed of unknown futures.

Because men could not
Abide one another in tolerance?
Because adults chose actions
Infantile in nature?
Egos raged as
Shots rang out.

--------------------------------------------

Strong idiologies
Erase reason and logic
Initiating carnage.
Bledout bodies
Already rotting in the sun
Belong to someone’s father.

Remember this legacy
As it predicts the future
When men learn nothing from history.


Copyright © 2007 WML

Regretfully, yours

My place on the shelf
has turned dusty and old
hands of the clock turn
yet my breath grows cold

Smother me with silence
in this night’s cool air
smooth my rigid corners
for time has not been fair

wind blowing softly
lost in her sweet time
withstand bitter yearning
from this lost soul of mine

Heart, lonely and stale
just as fruit on the vine
left to linger past harvest
like this wretched life of mine

Close off the passage
turn the last latch key
draw breath, so bitter
my captive spirit, set free


Copyrighted by Kentucky Dreamer

Missed Chances...

I suppose the thing that struck me most was how large the oak tree had grown in these past twenty years. When I left home it was in its first year and maybe five feet tall. Now its massive knurled arms held a million leaf-covered fingers in a canopy that covered the small yard with shade. The old house looked the same with its redbrick facade and white soffit, yet some how different. Maybe the knowledge that neither anyone I knew nor myself lived there anymore gave it a foreign appearance. “You can’t go home again,” they say and the meaning of that phrase became crystal clear to me as I slipped the car into gear and slowly drove away.

I looked left and right in mechanical fashion as I drove past the homes I grew up around. I wondered if anyone I knew even lived here anymore. Maybe a few lingered on but my guess is that most were long gone now. No matter, I was not here to see anyone anyway. To tell the truth, I was not sure why I was here at all. This visit had no logical reason to it other than I just wanted to see things here one more time before I put it behind me and moved on.

There was Suzie Jenson’s house with that carport where we both had our first kiss. The old porch swing that had hung there was gone now but its image was fresh in my head. We had sat there nervously swinging back and forth in the pale glow of a yellow porch light. I felt the hand that I held tremble a bit as I leaned my face into hers and our lips touched. I could have stayed there forever, and just might have, if her father hadn’t been watching us through the kitchen window. He damn near tore that door off the hinges and squalled for Suzi to get in the house. “You get your ass home, Paul Miller and don’t you come back here again ‘til I send for ya,” he had said. I grinned to myself a little as I thought about it. He would have shit a meat axe if he knew that kiss was not the only ‘first’ Suzi and me would share further on down the road that summer.

Across the street and one house down was where Billy Crowder lived. The old cinder-block garage we used to sneak behind with stolen cigarettes was still there but in bad need of a roof. I remember the day Momma caught us back there and had a bona fide conniption fit. She demanded my pocketknife from me and cut a switch off of one of Mr. Crowder’s apple trees with it. It was about as big around as your little finger and five feet long. She had me by my left wrist and fairly well cut the backs of my legs to pieces with it as we went towards home. She cussed me and prayed to Jesus in the same sentence and breath as we danced down the street in front of God and everybody. All’s well that ends well, I reckon, and I lost my taste for tobacco that day.

The street ended at the main highway, a four-lane road that ran to Nashville in one direction and north to Louisville in the other. There was a traffic light here where none had been my last time home. The old Greyhound sub-station across the road and Joe’s Bar and Grill beside it were gone, their footprints buried under a new road that had emerged over the years. I guess nothing is safe or sacred anymore. I turned with the light and headed towards town.

It was hard to see now through the thick growth of hedge apple trees surrounding the yard, but there on the right sat old Dixie Elementary. I thought how very small it looked now. Its halls seemed so massive to me as a child. It was here that I had learned some of my most important lessons in life. I learned that bloody noses and black eyes don’t hurt near as bad if you win the fight, broken hearts are not fatal and even grandmothers have to die. I was shown the world is not a happy, friendly place every time we had a civil defense drill in the hallway. “Sit on the floor with your backs against the wall, pull your knees to your chest and place your head between your legs,” they told us. But they didn’t tell us everything. They left out the part about kiss ‘your ass goodbye’ because you ain’t walking away from a nuclear attack. But we all knew it intuitively.

I moved on up the road until I came to the little strip mall on the left where we used to get our groceries. Winn-Dixie on one end and A & P on the other kept one another honest for the customers. Between them lay the drug store, the bakery, a barbershop, the old ‘Ten-Cent Store’ – Woolworth’s and the bank. The buildings were still there but I didn’t recognize a single business in them. The memories rushed over me as I recalled those hot summer days when Ronnie and me would ride our bikes the mile or so to get here. One or the other of us had done a chore for somebody and had fifty cents or a dollar, maybe. We had a pact that way, a “one for all, all for one” understanding that the good fortunes of one was good fortune for the other as well. Candy bars were a nickel then and donuts were three cents each. Ice cold bottles of pop were a dime at the bakery. A half dollar would find us over under the big maple trees across the street at the church eating 10 donuts and washing them down with a couple of cool drinks. Only my memories remain of those days now, the rest of it has gone.

I glanced left at my old high school on the left as I waited for the light to change. There had been much added on to it since I attended. I hardly recognized it anymore. School was out now and only a few cars were in front of the main building, probably maintenance men or janitors. The light changed and I made a right turn before I had time to get lost in thought about my high school days.

Most of the businesses here on Old Third Street road had changed, too. Burger Chef was gone and so was that little diner where our neighbor Ann had worked after her husband died. Champ’s Roller Rink, just before the railroad crossing, was now a small warehouse of some kind. But the times we had there! As a matter of fact, it was here that I spent my last night in this town.

It was like almost every other Saturday night. At least it started out that way. I was at Champ’s with Ronnie to see what kind of luck we would have with the ladies. Ronnie had pilfered a pint of Canadian Mist from his father’s liquor cabinet and we were not having a bit of trouble in the courage department. We hooked up with Cathy Crawford and her little sister, Mary Beth. We flirted and laughed and skated around the floor backward for a while. Every so often, Ronnie and me would excuse ourselves and slip outside for another sip of courage. Eventually we ended up leaving with the girls in tow, headed to a little secluded spot down by the river.

The radio was blaring inside the little Chevelle as I pulled out of the parking lot and turned right and headed across the railroad tracks there. The crossing guard must have been broken and I never saw the train. The last thing I remember was Cathy’s screams being drowned out by the train’s horn, a great concussion and then nothing.

I awoke in a hospital bed in the jail wing of the hospital. As soon as the doctor had examined me and determined I was lucid enough to talk, a sheriff’s deputy stepped forward and read me my rights and the charges against me. Three counts of vehicular homicide, he said. The rest is history, as they say. My history.

My folks both died while I was in prison. They left me what they had in a bank account so I could try to start my life over when I got out. I made parole this week but I will never be out of this prison in my head. Every night for the last twenty years when I laid down to sleep, six eyes stared at me from the dark ceiling of my cell. I can’t imagine that being anything but a life sentence.

The last big holiday of the Summer is fast approaching and with it the parties and celebrations. I hope everyone has fun and stays safe. I am running this piece in hopes that someone, somewhere will read it and think before they make a mistake like Paul, the character in the story.

Even Plowboys Fly Sometimes...

I had occasion to make a cross-country trip a year or so ago. Tranferring flights in Texas, I made these observations.


Leaving Houston...

Hunkering down I pass under low ceilings
Turning sideways to get down the narrow aisle.
I wait as the woman in front of me rams and jams
Her last carry-on bag into the overhead compartment.
Moving on, I find my seat, halfway back on the port side.
"Ask for a window and they give you a wing,"
I chuckle to myself as I place my jacket overhead.

Taking my seat and buckling the belt
Cool air hisses through the vent above me
A bit stale and smelling slightly of disinfectant.
The cabin is quiet yet noisy at the same time
Each sound amplified in the silence.
Electric motors whir from the bulkheads and floor
On again, off again from their secret places.
Muffled voices, almost whispers, can be heard:
Speaking to cell phones or the seat next to them.
The occasional cough or baby’s squeal breaks the silence.
The aircraft rocks now and then, to and fro
Thrown baggage moving the giant avian beast.

A change of pressure in my ears tells me the cabin is sealed
I open my mouth to find relief and look out the window.
What a strange place for a hearse, I think
Sitting there on the tarmac with its back door open.
A shiny gray casket is slid onto a wheeled bier
The handlers slow and deliberate in their movements.
It dawns on me that someone is making a final trip home
As they slowly move under the belly of the aircraft.
A final thud and the last compartment is closed.

Closed…. the word is ringing in my head now.

Closed…. many chapters in many lives have just closed.

My mind wanders in curiosity for a moment or two
At my brothers and sisters here with me today.
How many of them are leaving home for the first time?
Who, like the one in the cargo hold
Is going home for the last time?
Some are just passing through, I guess.
Births, deaths, graduations and failures
Marriages, divorces, running to something or from it
New jobs, lost jobs, new loves, lost loves
Or just knocking about seeing new country.
All gathered briefly in this microcosm of humanity
In a common place with a common goal:
Simply to leave here and get there.

We begin to move away from the terminal
Headed for the runway and the sky.
I half listen to the spiel of the flight attendant
As she tells us all the things we will never need to know.
The sudden thrust of the engines hurls us down the runway
One final bump, as the wheels leave the ground, and we are airborne. Cities, towns and countryside pass far below us.
As we ascend to cruising altitude,I descend into sleep.
My thoughts return to her as I drift away.

The sudden jolt of the wheels touching down
Startle me out of my slumber as I struggle to quickly place myself.
The roar of reversed engines slows the aircraft down.
We leave the runway and taxi toward the terminal.
Coming to a stop at the gate, people begin to shuffle about
Gathering their belongings for departure.
A hearse is backed into place on the tarmac
Its cargo somberly loaded before it drives away.
"Last one on, first one off," I grin to myself
Looking at the crowded aisle before me.
"Maybe being dead ain’t so bad."


Copyright © 2007 Mike Lawson

NOTE: This piece won an award as "Most Original" in a contest over on Writer's Cafe. It beat out 236 other pieces, so I guess that's something. lol