By Jocelyne Ross

Word Count: 278

Rating: G

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

Joyce is gone again. To the calm, peaceful land. Yet again, she hears Gabriel’s voice, and they carry her into the past.

***

Joyce is leaving her parents’ house to go to the church: she and Gabriel will marry today. All her family surround her, her relatives, her friends…and she in her white wedding gown is waving goodbye to all of them. While tears stream down her face, she remembers Oliver Wendell Holmes words:

Where we love is home.
Home that our feet may leave,
But not our hearts.

And she waves again with her white gloved hand to these joyful yet sad familiar faces…

Gabriel carried his beautiful bride away from her parents, family, relatives, friends and far away from her country to his. She left her country, her home, her sea and all the people she loved and who loved her back even more and she stepped into a new country, new life, new home.

***

Suddenly Gabriel’s voice brings her back to the present. She hears him asking a priest to give her his blessing, then she feels the priest’s hand on her forehead as he prays. But she can no longer stay in this moment; she is drawn back to her wedding day. She and Gabriel are standing at the altar, she sees the priest placing the wedding crown on her head, and another crown on Gabriel’s head.

Reliving her happy memory, she smiles as she lies peacefully on her hospital bed. Seeing her smile, Gabriel and the priest believe that perhaps Joyce is not as far away as they had feared—and that she is waking up to what is going on around her.

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