Farewell, But Never Goodbye By Autumn Fields

A/N: Hello everybody! My English teacher assigned us a creative writing essay, and I decided to write a story about my poem, "Goodbye", and see if I could pull it off. Unfortunately there was a word limit on this, one thousand words, so I didn't do as great of a job as I would have otherwise, but I still got a very fine compliment on it from my teacher (He said it was the all-out best paper he had ever received from any 10th grader in all his years of teaching!). So, without further ado, here's another story.

If there is one thing that I have learned in my thirty-seven years of existence, it is that life without love is simply not worth the trouble. The meaning of life has never been quite clear to me. We are born, we grow old, and we die, but to what point and purpose? What is the meaning of it all? Throughout our lives we change, explore, discover knew things, and strive to leave an impact on the world before we leave. Once we have left, however, we will never know how much of an impact we actually made on the people we left be behind; the people that loved and cared for us. When Michael left me twenty-one years ago, my world was shattered, and my heart was broken in two. The impact he left upon my soul was one that I must live with until the end of my days.
I was there the day he died. I was in the hospital holding his hand, smiling at him through my curtain of hard, wet tears, telling him everything would be all right soon enough, though not believing it myself. The pain that had begun to course through my heart as I watched him lying there, connected to all sorts of machinery through blue tubes and red wires, barely conscious, struggling to keep hold of my own hand, had been horrible, so unimaginably, painstakingly horrible. I sat and listened to the beeping of the heart monitor, savoring every beep that I heard, wishing and wishing for more time, but I knew that it would not come; time was running short. Tentatively, I wiped a lock of hair out of his beautiful eyes, pushing it back to join the rest, covered in sweat. As I did this, he raised his spare hand, cold and shaking, to touch mine, and held it there on top of his head. He said my name and managed to smile, but I could see tears leaking from his eyes. It was then that he told me that he loved me; it was then that he confessed loving me more than life itself, that he had always loved me and had never told me before; it was then that he kissed me for the very first time, though rather feebly and weakly; and it was then that the heart monitor lapsed into one long, earsplitting squeal; the omen of death. I held his hand as he left the world, screaming that I loved him too, hugging him tightly to my chest as tears poured down my front and splashed onto his pale face. Next to me, dressed in black, his mother and father turned and hugged each other to cry, but there was no one there for me; no one to comfort me any longer; no one to tell me that my dreams would come true; no one to give me the smile I had needed to get me through the day; no one to hug in dire times of need; no one to love as I had always loved Michael; no, there was no one there at all. Eyes puffy, heart pulsating in the most unbelievable pain, I stared ahead of me as I left the hospital room, leaving behind my love, my happiness, and my sanity.
I had always known Michael; always been his best friend, always lived three houses down from him. In grade school we pretended like there was nothing between us, separated by gender as all children are. We chased one another around, playing hide and go seek and other games with the rest of the kids in our grade. After school we would walk home together and play board games, smiling and laughing, getting to know one another. When we entered middle school things changed, and it became popular to have a best friend that was a boy. With this change, Michael and I became inseparable.
It seems so long ago that Michael and I came across the pond near the willow tree. I believe we were 13 when we discovered the beauty of the cherry blossoms in the spring, the serenity of the glistening water, and the comfort of the willow's shade. This pond became our meeting place; our hideout when we wanted to be alone. Quite often we would stay up late at night, talking until dawn, pouring out our secrets and sharing our innermost desires with each other. More than once the afternoon found us just waking up near the shallow water's edge. Without the pond and the shade of the willow tree, I do not think that I would have fallen in love with him in quite the same way.
It was in our junior year of high school that I really realized it. Everyone said we were in love, even our parents, but we would never admit it, not even to ourselves, though I realize now it should have been obvious. It has been twenty years, but I still remember exactly how it happened. It was nearing midnight, the moon was naught but a fluorescent orange orb hanging in the sky, and Michael and I were sitting on the flower- covered earth under the willow tree. We had been talking about a particularly ugly girl at school, and both of us began laughing. I looked up into his face as he smiled and looked down to mine, and both of us stopped laughing. For a moment I had thought he was going to kiss me, but he turned away right before, making me blush a bright crimson red, and suddenly it all made sense. I never told him how I felt.
Now the world is unclear to me, and everything seems so wrong. I visit his gravesite 300 miles away once a year on the anniversary of his death to leave him a red rose; his favorite flower. Sometimes his mother writes him a letter for me to read to him, and sometimes other people will give me flowers and trinkets to leave, but none ever accompany me to see him. The gravestone marking his resting place lies under a serene willow tree that sits atop a flower-covered hill overlooking a glistening, peaceful pond. The inscription etched into the solid stone has begun to fade away, so unlike the impact Michael left on my broken heart. We are all born, we all grow old, and we all die. Some of us become great leaders, others famous writers or movie stars, and still others amount to nothing at all in the wide scope of the world. It is the lesson that, no matter how insignificant we seem, in our death we leave behind a great impact on those who knew and loved us, I have learned as a result of the death of my best friend; of Michael Murray.