By Jocelyne Ross

Word Count: 575

Rating: G

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

Weeks later Joyce’s cloud brings her back to the present. She hears a young man reading from a book: her favorite book and she wonders how did this young man know about her favorite book. But Joyce is too tired to try to hear or understand and she went back … Joyce remembers now her second son Gabriel Jr. and how she taught him how to read. She had simply read many stories to him aloud, and one day he surprised her by telling her that he could read. She had stood there in awe just listening to her four year old son read. His love for reading had endured.

Gabriel Jr. is seven years old now and still loves reading, she actually has to ask him to put his book away and help taking care of his young siblings or in the chores at home.

Another part in her memory brought her back to thoughts of her home country. Every year Joyce had visited her country with her family. Her little village stayed the same, the people also stayed the same even their customs and traditions all the same. It seemed as if the time just forgot about this town and its people. The cities there and its people changed with every visit; they were eager to forget about their past and traditions and ready to embrace everything new and fashionable. Joyce watched this fast change in the cities with sad eyes and rushed with her family to her hometown where her parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins and neighbors were waiting for them with open arms, open hearts and big smiles. Their visits were wonderful, but too short. The day of them leaving is a sad day for her little town; everybody there is sad, some will come to say goodbye; give them big hug and then tears begin falling from everybody’s eyes. “We’ll see you next year … God willing…”

After coming back with her family from visiting her country one year, Gabriel Jr. decided to become a pilot. “So I can fly you to visit your country and relatives whenever you miss them, Mom. What do you think?”

“Where will the airplane take you…but away from me, little Gabriel?”

“I told you, Mom, you will all be with me when we go, and I will only charge you two dollars.”

“Well, that sounds wonderful! Thank you so much, Gabriel, for thinking about Mommy.”

“You’re welcome!” he said. Then he ran out to play with his airplanes while his neglected trains sit lonely on the floor.

***

Joyce remembers one year ago her husband telling her after coming back from a conference accompanied by his two little boys, “Oh Joyce … I felt so strong being with my boys; so complete, I used to go alone and look for someone to talk to or be with but this year I didn’t need to be with anybody else; I was content.”

Oh, how she loves and misses her two little boys! And her dear husband! Is it perhaps her awakened longing and love for her family that makes her desire to leave now?

Joyce wants to go back to them. But she feels like a prisoner locked behind many walls, and she cannot see her way out.

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