By Jocelyne Ross

Word Count: 690

Rating: G

Summary: While Joyce lies comatose, she relives her life with her husband and family, as they try to wake her up.

For someone who is waiting for his beloved to come home, every day seems like eternity, what if it is not sure that the beloved is ever to come back? Such was Gabriel’s state. Gabriel wonders if perhaps Joyce would never come back. Looking at his wife, connected to so many machines, and waiting for her to come back to him. He is longing, sad…

***

Joyce is back home at beloved spot in her village—a place that has a special place in her heart since she was a little girl. It is where the houses stop and the foot road begins; the road is so small and narrow and all around are fields of mostly wild grass and wild flowers like Mary’s incense also known as Persian cyclamen it has heart shaped light green leaves, cup shaped with white petals and pinkish purple bottom and beautiful smell like incense, beautiful yellow chrysanthemum are everywhere along with the white marguerite daisy, pink or white dianthus strictus, heartsease flowers with its white petals tinged with yellow and deep violet, wild corn poppy with its bright red color and dark black heart, the narcissus with the heavenly fragrance with its white petals and deep yellow center, little yellow bermuda buttercup and add to all these the fragrance of orange and lemon trees blossoms and try to imagine the unearthly fragrance that filled the place … You can also see some occasional tall, thin deep dark green cypress trees or happy light green pine trees spreading up there against the blue sky like green umbrellas or silver green olive trees and sometimes proud cedar trees reaching up to heaven, standing there since ever with their justifiable pride as if they know somehow that their ancestors had given up their bodies to build king Solomon’s temple.

Joyce loves the olive trees best: They look so humble yet so beautiful, and their leaves’ shape and color are very unique; truly a blessed tree the olive tree is perhaps because Jesus blessed it when He spent the night before His crucifixion, His last night on earth, praying in the olive trees’ garden, the garden of Gethsemane . She reflects that there is nothing more beautiful than walking in a grove of olive trees in the moonlight where the wind move softly the little delicate leaves which shine like silver under the moonlight and smell like incense.

That place which Joyce loved, was very quiet and calm, the air there was so fresh and clean, Joyce is there, eight years old on this day, a little girl sitting between the tall grass with a needle and thread. She picks a yellow wild flower and puts the needle in its center and pushes it down; later she picks a white flower, then red, then back to yellow and so on. She is making a flower necklace to put on our Blessed Mother’s picture at home. While making the necklace, she sings. Then she looks up through the tall grass and sees her little sister dancing around in circles in the middle of the fields and laughs while touching with her little fingers the tip of the grass.

Joyce stops singing and begins laughing too.

“Come Joyce, come dance with me. Put your necklace aside for a moment, and come dance! ha…ha…ha…dance… ”

Joyce puts her needle and flowers neatly aside and jumps up to join her sister.

She begins turning in circles, her head up, eyes looking at the clear blue sky and her little fingers touching the soft blades of the grass. Suddenly something changes. She is still turning with her head up, her hand is in someone else’s hand… She looks and sees her handsome Gabriel dancing with her on their wedding day. She is wearing her long round gown of white, dancing, still turning, hearing a song “Around the world I’ve searched for you… I traveled on when hope was gone to keep a rendezvous…”

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