Happy Halloween everyone! I love today. Like, I can't adequately express how much I love Halloween.
Instead of expressing it, I thought I would do one better. I haven't done it in awhile, but I love flash fiction and after finding a really cool prompt, I went for it.
Introducing Photograph... Follow the link at the end to find out what happened in the photo and how things will be resolved...
Years ago, I sat in this living room, surrounded by family members as we celebrated some birthday or holiday. Mother would enter the room from the kitchen carrying a tray filled with confectionary delights along with mugs of hot coco or cider. Nog, or hot toddies were for the adults. We laughed in this room, cried in this room, and gathered together two months ago to say farewell to our loving mother and father.
They went peacefully, according to their doctor. Mother died at 11:59pm and Father departed at 12:01am. They weren't very old, however mother had cancer. By the time she and Father explained it to my brothers and I, it had spread through her body, sucking the life from her day by day. It started as breast cancer. Who knew a small lump could create such havoc. It spread to her lymph nods then her spleen, liver, pancreas, spine then eventually her brain.
Her decline had been swift after they announced her prognosis. One day she sat there telling us all not to worry and the next we were calling the funeral home to have her and our dad picked up. Doc said daddy died of a broken heart. They were the love of each others lives, so it made sense, however it didn't make it any less difficult for us.
After their services and the reception we held at the house, my brother Dan brought up selling the house. I was inclined to agree, yet Kevin didn't want to. There were too many memories here. Good ones in fact, he couldn't see parting with our childhood home. I empathized with his assessment, and also realized in those minutes standing at the sink our mother used to stand at while filling the dishwasher, even the good memories hurt.
Somehow, Dan convinced Kevin selling would be the right thing to do. Today, we were having an estate sale, then whatever was left, we'd divide between us. The new owners of the home would be moving in by the end of the month and we, sadly, had to be gone.
One of the last boxes in the basement had been all of our old photo albums. Mom loved to have pictures of everything. Thirty years of life, love and happiness had been crammed into at least twenty albums. I decided I would split them evenly then distribute the pictures from the remaining album to all three of us. It seemed like the only fair thing to do.
As I placed each one onto the coffee table, I didn't even look through them, I couldn't. Not yet, anyway. But, when I grabbed the blue one with a Bunch of golden flowers and a small bunny on the front, something compelled me to look at it. I opened it up and grinned. There were pictures of our mother and father in this very living room. Mom was pregnant with Kevin and Dan and I were on the floor by the Christmas tree playing with whatever toys we'd gotten that year. Family members were also there, and I'm pretty sure my aunt Susan took the picture.
Going through the pictures, I was swept away by the nostalgia, until one of the pictures fell out of the album. What I saw sent a chill to my bones... PHOTOGRAPH
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