Prompt #118
Last call
Another Friday arrives!
Sheesh, life goes by so fast.
The last time I saw my father…
…he was lying on his bed, still breathing. We were all with him—his kids, grandkids, his brother, his wife. At a certain point, I laid down next to him on one side, and my mother laid down on his other side. We waited, all of us. My mother spoke to her husband of more than sixty years. She said all the things, all the right things. And finally, he took his last breath and died. Among the last words he spoke were these: I want to go home.
There are about 20 novels in those words.
I was there, too, when my mother died, surrounded by her five children. I don’t know what her last words were, but I do remember that about a week earlier, she asked me for her purse and I had to say something like, it’s here somewhere, when, in fact, I’d thrown it out. Well, it was a million years old, and falling apart, and also, she’d been in that bed without moving for a long time already. It didn’t seem like she was going to need that purse.
There’s at least 50 novels in that story.
I was there for other last moments. I was there when my son left for college and I watched as the ferry he rode took off across the water. That was the end of his childhood and the moment he launched into his own life, away from his parents.
There was the last time I wore a jacket with padded shoulders. The last time I fit into a size 4 dress. The last time I drove my little Datsun B210. My last day as a cocktail waitress in a bar in San Francisco. The last time I kissed my boyfriend Gary—and then broke up with him. (And later, he died.)
Sigh—so many last things in life.
Here’s a short story (not a flash fiction) written by the magnificent Rachel Khong. It’s about the last days of a pair of friends before a massive transformation. The story, found online at Guernica, is called D Day. The story also appears in Khong’s collection of stories: My Dear You.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write a story called “The Last Time.”
Your story can be about anything that happened for the very last time. It doesn’t have to be tragic, sad, or life-changing.
Feel free to write about something that didn’t really happen, or about something that happened to someone else. Maybe you want to write about something that happens in the future or in another universe.
If you don’t want to write about “the last time,” go ahead and write about “the first time.” Anything goes!
Stories posted that run more than 400 words run the risk of not being read by yours truly.
The last time I was in a barber shop was 1968.
The last time I went to a dance was maybe 1964.
I smoked my last cigarette around 1990.
The last time I quit smoking was 1985.
My last divorce was 1995.
I don’t remember the last time I was sure about something.
But just yesterday I cursed the politicians.
I don’t know why the middle decades have disappeared.
The last time I thought about running out of money was yesterday.
The last time I said so what about running out of money was just now.
The last time I told myself not to worry about getting old was the
Last time I was worried about getting old.
The last time I cut my own hair was a little bit too long ago,
According to a friend.
Every afternoon my neighbor in the marina
Smokes a cigar with a glass of whiskey, sitting under an umbrella.
Sometimes I go over and we talk about how fucked up the war was.
The last time I was over there he offered me a drink,
But the last time he offered me a drink I said no thanks.
The last time I saw my mother was after I’d been there, at my sister Erica’s, for two weeks, helping out as my mother deteriorated after a stroke. It had been quite difficult. She had needed very intimate care, if you know what I mean, and I guess it wasn’t any different than what millions of healthcare workers do every day, but it was my mother, and the role reversal was quite intense. But it also felt like the most important thing I’d done in a while, too.
She was starting to no longer be sure who I was or my sister was, but she accepted our love unquestioningly, without fear. We would listen to her dreams about her childhood in France, and hold the phone up to her as she sang 1930s campfire girls songs with her sister Françoise over the phone. I would take her around the block in her wheelchair and she would have lucid moments, but I can’t remember what she said, though you’d think I would. She may have said she liked some of the cypress trees, I think.
When it was finally time for me to leave – Sandra had come down from Seattle to relieve me – Erica started to explain that I was returning home, and I grabbed her wrist in a signal to stop. There was no reason to let her know it was the last time she’d see her son. (That’s my sister. Terminally honest.) I just said, “Mom, I’m going to the grocery store. But I just wanted to tell you I love you.” I kissed her on the cheek and said “je t’aime, ma petite maman.”
She may not have been able to quite place me, on the other other hand, she had surely forgotten I’d ever went to prison, and that was a big comfort to me.
I cried in the car to the train station, and my ex-brother-in-law didn’t know what to say. But my niece asked what was wrong and I said, “It’s the last time I’ll ever see my mother.”
She was moved into a hospice in Paradise and died three weeks later. It was a lovely place, and I was very sad when it was consumed in flames when those epic fires destroyed the town. But if somehow it was the only building left standing, that might have been even sadder.