By Jocelyne Ross

Word Count: 1380

Rating: G

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

The fragrance of roses, jasmine, gardenia and many different kind of flowers reaches Joyce and brings her back into the present moment. She hears a young girl’s sweet voice praying the rosary next to her.

This beautiful fragrance of flowers awoke a beautiful memory. She can almost smell the fragrance of wild flowers and wild thyme bathed in morning dew ascending with the fog and the chanting of birds from deep down the valley towards the heights of the mountains very early in the morning… it’s the memory of her family’s vacation. The vacation they spent up on the highest mountains. The views were breathtaking; so beautiful, so grandeur and the silence of the mountains and the valleys was so overwhelming like if this silence was sacred that ones feels almost guilty to interrupt it. Joyce remembers thinking how someone can come here and see all this never ending beauty and not connect it directly to its creator, to God.

This trip was yet another proof to her about the beauty of God and made her see how beautiful is the work of His hands; even in the deepest of the forest where nobody can even reach there is still beauty. She remembers telling her little children one day when they were gazing at a splendid view from the trails looking down at a blueish green river snaked in between two valleys full of different kind of trees of many colors, she was telling them that nobody is here and she doesn’t know when was the last time that a human eye saw this particular beauty yet God kept it beautiful somehow she knows for sure that long long time ago God thought to Himself one day a mother and a father with their little children will stand up there and look down and I want them to see all this beauty to remind them of My beauty and so God carved these valleys, put these trees each one in a particular spot and specific color, let the river flow and finally added some singing birds , it was the most beautiful present of all times.

Also she remembers the uniqueness of every sunset … every night of the week they spent up on the mountain they went to watch the sunset from a specific, very high cliff area where the trees and the valleys went deep down below their eyes and the high mountains surrounded them from every direction . Every night God painted a different sunset for them, each one was more beautiful than the other and when you think that you just saw the most beautiful sunset you realize next evening that sunsets can be even more beautiful. The only thing which was the same every evening was the sun making its last bow to its Creator and then disappearing behind the mountains with the hope of another morning.

Every sunset had different colors; one evening was pink, next evening was orange then purple then red sometimes all these colors together at the same time… and the clouds, the valleys and the mountains changed colors reflecting the color of that particular evening ….. every sunset is unique and will never be repeated for eternity.

Joyce is back to the present moment and still hears the gentle voice reciting the rosary. She remembers her three-year-old little Geanna.

“Mommy, will you please teach me how to pray the rosary.”

“Yes, Geanna. Just sit quietly and listen to me and your siblings— and you will learn.” Joyce smiles, remembering all the wrong pronunciations Geanna makes, and how she once told Gabriel. “I feel a little ashamed, but these mispronounced words are just too cute to be corrected. I know very soon she will grow out of it but just not yet.”

“Make me doggy ears, mommy!” And Joyce brushes her little Geanna’s hair and makes two little doggy ears; she can see Geanna running all over the house, chanting, “Hail, Holy Queen thrown above…” with her doggy ears flying in the air once to the left once to the right.

***

Suddenly the voice recalls her. Then the voice stops praying for a short while and whispers: “She smiled at me! Thank you, Blessed Mother, thank you Jesus. I brought you flowers today… I know how much you like flowers.” And then she resumes the rosary, as Joyce’s mind takes her down yet another path.

Joyce fights to stay in this moment. It is beautiful, peaceful. She feels that something important is about to happen. But her cloud floats away; she has no choice.

***

She sees herself impatient, struggling with the small services and the many chores required by her growing family. “Gabriel, I cannot do this anymore. I am done—I am finished.”

“I know, my love, that you had a bad day, but tomorrow is a new day. And before we know it, the children be grown and gone, and we will wish for these busy days.”

“You have no idea what happened today: the baby cried all day long; Geanna made her even cry more, if that is possible; Christelle and Gabriel Jr. argued the whole time; Michael was so upset because his siblings are too loud and there is no quiet place for him to read. It is too chaotic here. I am leaving!” Joyce begins to cry.

“Leaving?! Where would you go? I know that you are exhausted. Please, go take a shower and relax. I will finish up cleaning the kitchen and get the children ready for bed.”

“I need a break. I want to get a job outside the home… I am sorry, Gabriel, but I’ve needed to do this for some time.”

Gabriel looks at her for a long time. How I love this woman… She looks so unhappy.

“We will work together to find you a job. When we do, I will quit mine and stay home with the children. We will begin searching for a job tomorrow.”

He has barely finished talking when Joyce jumps up and hugs, then kisses him. She is all smiles.

***

Soon afterward, Joyce found a job. She began working outside the home, and Gabriel stayed at home with the children. He just loved it, seeing the children all day long; doing projects with the older ones and playing on the floor with the little ones; reading books; memorizing poems; playing games; building castles from blocks and attack them afterward; going grocery shopping. He loved it when people would ask him, ”Are all these children yours?”

He would smile broadly, and declare, “Yes, isn’t that wonderful?

The answer was always, “Yes, you have a beautiful family!”

“They take after their mother,” he would say, suddenly missing her very much.

Every day, one hour before Joyce arrived home from work, Gabriel and the three older children would get to work, picking up toys and books, tidying the house, putting the last touches on dinner, and the music goes on. She would enter the house tired from work, exhausted from fighting traffic, then look around at her tidy home. She would hear the peaceful music, smell the aroma from the kitchen, see her husband’s happy face. Then she would see the children; they looked so precious in their pajamas. She ached a little at how much she had missed them.

One day, after she arrived home, she blurted out, “How do you do it?”

“What did you say dear? Gabriel, please lower the music; I can’t hear your mom. Thank you… What did you say my love?”

”How do you do this? I mean, you seem to have everything under control. You all are happy here, yet I am miserable. Now I am sad and lonely because I miss you all and miss home!”

It did not take Gabriel and Joyce much time till they decided that they wanted to be all together again, as a family. Joyce quit her short-lived job, and Gabriel began working from home. Soon they were doing everything together: going shopping; cooking; enjoying picnics, camping, reading, eating lunch and dinner together.

Again, Joyce smiles, recalling the happy change that had transformed their lives.

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