DAY 20 04/04-18

I thought that the view from the hospital room wasn't something special; the only thing I stared at was small clouds moving slowly forward, so slowly I lost interest in looking at them. 

But they actually did something too. They made me realize: Life is like a cloud. It comes into different shapes and forms and they offer no guarantees, no affinity for anything or anyone. Not for the kid that wanted to swim but couldn't, not for the kid that wished to see fighter planes soar through the sky. There is no promises, no certainties. You get what you get and what you get isn't necessarily what you want. But the cloud doesn't adapt to you. It rains when it needs to, it disperses when it doesn't have raindrops to shed. Events in the life can be so unexpected, just like when you feel the first raindrops tap on your head even if the weather forecast promised there would be sun and it surprises you but eventually it will stop raining. The clouds will paus for a second.

Eventually.

° ° °

My body is dipped into thousands layers of horror, my ears hidden behind millions of concrete walls. I can't hear anything anyone is saying, can't understand if they're saying something to me or someone else. They're lips are moving; it looks like they're talking loudly. They're saying something to each other, assuring and questioning. I search for something among the chaos in front of me, but I don't even know what I'm searching for. My breathing is the only thing I can hear. It's boisterous and craggy and can't they hear how I'm panicking? 

I don't know when I managed to drop my sanity on the floor; I was calm just minutes ago. But as soon as the doctors came and they looked at me, something inside of me snapped. An emotion so heavy and raw it weighed down my skeleton until it started rattling from the burden and I think my lips have trembled ever since then.

My breaths becomes tight, my jaw tenses until my whole face is hurting. I implore my mind to think about anything else past this moment, and how it's too much white around me and how it doesn't calm me down. Isn't white supposed to me innocent? Freedom and calmness? I feel none of those things right now. I need blue. More specifically blue eyes, the waves within them and the liveness they hold. So clean, pristine and sincere.

My fingers clench and unclench and I want to clutch onto something but I can't. I want to find control over this situation but I know this situation has completely overcome me. In all ways possible. I can't do anything else but to just wait and hope, hope like that kid for his Easter egg he never got and hope like that kid that wanted to spend time with his father but life was too complex for that. There were no guarantees for what could happen and what could been said. You took what you get.
I need to take what I get, but I toil against it. That's why I'm panicking, breathing so harshly. I can't accept my fate, can't accept that I have no idea how my fate will look. In my head I add numbers for how many seconds that passes by but I lose track of them all the time.

A face hovers over me, saying something to me that doesn't break through the walls around my ears. Not the face I want to see. It looks reassuring and calm, like it's trying to curb my fear but it doesn't help me at all. It only increases the tremble in my body. The face is saying something more to me, before I watch it pull away, among the other faces in front of me. They're still talking to each other and it makes me crazy that I can't hear anything of it. Never have I been as powerless and inert as I am right now.

My breathes turns shallow as I watch something beside me. I open my mouth as to say something to make them stop but nothing comes out. Stopstopstopstop. I want them to be still and I want to sit up and escape from this white room and out of this building that grants me no positive feeling. My thoughts starts to stir into a liquid form inside my head, sluggish and flowy. I try to open my mouth again but it won't comply. It remains closed, so I can't say anything. Not like I could before. I force my eyes to endure being open but hundreds of big stones lays on my eyelids and weighing them down until I only see yellow because someone must have directed a lamp at my face but soon the yellow fades into another color. Black.

Ink spreads itself in my mind and every second I stocked inside my head spills into glass shards.

° ° °

Whimsical Moon , scatter brained,

see and say to my sweet heart

for God who loves me;

say to him that I do not live of so much suffering,

say to him that he must return to me.

Whimsical Moon, scatter brained,

see and say to my sweet heart

for God who loves me;

say to him that I die,

that he has compassion,

Tell him to have mercy on my heart

Oh small round moon,

that the foam of your light

bathe my nights!

Oh small round moon,

say to him that you have seen me

crying of love!

° ° °

"Dad?" I faintly asked, afraid that if I raised my voice too high it would somehow crack the calm mood dad had today. He had just warmed the food from yesterday and he slumped down into the worn couch, remote already in his hand. Upon hearing me, he turned his head to me lackadaisically, waiting for me to continue. I gulped. "Do you think that I will see a fighter plane someday? And not on your phone? I mean... live?" My voice was hesitant, my lips moving cautiously. I kept thinking that anything I said or did could throw him off the edge.

But to my big surprise, he smiled. Tiredly, yes, but he smiled, and it wasn't annoyed in any way.

"Well of course", he said, and I got happy a little too quickly. Dad must have seen it because he chuckled, but he got serious almost immediately. "But not now. You need to understand, kiddo, we aren't having it so easy in life right now. Going to an live air show isn't our top priority. Surviving is our top priority."

It would have been better if he said something like "that's why we have each other. To survive together", but he never did. Somehow he must have known that we didn't have each other, that he would be gone, and I would survive on my own.

° ° °

My eyes lightly flutters open, but I only see in a blur. Every part of my body feels full of sand, stapled together, my mind overflowing with grains of every possible emotion there is to feel and I wonder if I got caught in quicksand over all. Maybe I fell into the same path as dad did. Maybe I am dead.

I must be, because as I blink the only thing I see is white. It's bright and blinding and almost makes me close my eyes but I keep them open. So there is a heaven after all. I never thought that I would feel this numb if entering it. I never even thought about ending up in heaven. For me, it didn't exist.

There is whispers around me. Maybe it's the angels. They're calling my name, I realize, urging me to wake up. Wake up, Keith, they're saying. I'm already awake, I say to them but they don't listen. My name is coming from every direction now and the whispers gets louder and louder and it's just Keith Keith Keith
everywhere
and,

"Keith..." someone says.

With a sharp intake of breath I fly up into a sitting position, like I was under water for an eternity, like it's my first time breathing fresh air after traveling to space, like my head was under sand this whole time and it's only now my lungs are working. Everything is spinning. I don't know if I'm floating around in this endless capacity of emptiness or if I'm stabled. I blink and blink, trying to regain some control I never had in the first place, frustrated that I can't see anything else than just white. I blink until the outlines of something else takes form in my field of view. It's barely there, but as I blink some more the outlines get more defined, developing into a shape. More peculiarly into a body. I manage to scatter away the blur in my eyes and it takes some seconds but it works.

Finally. Exactly what I wanted to see. Blue. He looks at me like I just hung the moon for him and maybe it's just my dizziness playing games with me but his eyes are teary and he smiles like he just needs to, like it's the right moment to do so and there is nothing uncertain in his face and somehow it assures me of good things. 

Lance pulls something from beside him on the bed he's sitting on and in my eyes his movement looks slowed down and choppy but I can see all of them. He holds up my notebook and he has one page open, he never stops smiling and the tears in his eyes never disappear and I'm breathing like my heart to the moon without me.

He says,

"I think it's time for another letter..."

I look at his handwriting on the almost blank page and I think I'm smiling too, despite the current moment and the look on his face is to die for.

DAY 21 05/04-18

° ° °

Sooo... This journey really ends...

I know that I have written this whole book before publishing it, so I didn't really get to experience your reactions throughout the writing, but I know that I will appreciate them as much as I always do nevertheless. This book has a huge impact on me, as it maybe also have on some of you, and it was a pleasure to write this. I hope you liked this book as much as I did.

I just overall want to say thank you, for just reading. The votes and comments just adds on to the joy. I will forever be thankful.
BUT, as I mentioned in my first book, there is more books to come, and more journeys within. I hope to find you there too.

Thank you so much for reading my book ❤️