By R.J. Tennyson
I was a coward. Well that’s what I tell myself.
Whether it’s true or not, is neither here nor there, because on the odd occasion when my mind is quiet and I think back, it is what I tell myself.
I.
Was.
A.
Coward.
Let me take you back to the beginning. To the moment life split in two: pre and post, average and… coward.
Thursday, 2nd of December, 2004. The moon was in Leo. The sun was in Sagittarius. And my sister was in a doctor’s office being told she had cancer. Did you see that coming? No, she didn’t either.
41 years old, non-smoker, non-drinker, mother of five, grandmother of two with malignant tumours on her liver, and weeks to months to live. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!
Get to the point, you’re thinking. So how does that make you a coward? Well, that was the day I pulled my head (along with my arms and legs) into my shell; like a cartoon tortoise. Pop!
My flawed theory was that if you don’t look, then it doesn’t exist. Cover your face and you don’t exist.
Not true.
It just makes you a coward.
Shamefully, I can count on my fingers, the times I spoke with my sister in the following 14 months. Hell, I can count the times I saw her on one hand. Argh, perhaps I’m understating… but it wouldn’t be by much.
So now you’re thinking, well he’s a bit of a selfish arse. Well that would be a fair assessment I reckon. A few thousand dollars spend in therapy told me that someone needs to ‘detach’ and be the ‘rock’ for the rest of the family, and in this instance it was me.
I’d live with far less shame if this was true. I nailed the detach part; but I wasn’t very ‘rockish’. When the going got tough, I got going… straight into my shell. POP!
While I was being a coward, my sister was being a superhero. If she was a superhero, then her cancer was a super-villain. And if her life was a book, then neither D.C or Marvel would want to option the movie rights. Audiences want to see the superhero triumph, but the book of life doesn’t always follow the story arc we try to write.
Thursday, 16th of February 2006. The moon was in Virgo. The sun was in Aquarius. And my sister lost the fight of her life.
She waited for the right moment (like there is a right moment). The moment her loved ones stepped out of her room for the first time in days. That’s when she slipped away.
My last conversation with her, was just days before she passed. I poked my head from my shell and apologised for being a coward. She told me it was ok, that she understood, and that she loved me.
BAM! POW!
She protected me to the end.
That’s what superheroes do.
(This story was winner of the 2018 Somers Paper Nautilus Short Story Competition – Open Non Fiction)
R.J. Tennyson - Writer 