Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: SEA CHANGE or TREE CHANGE (07/13/17)
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TITLE: Moving to Heaven | Previous Challenge Entry
By LeslieJean Anderson
07/20/17 -
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“Your Dad won’t last forever, and we’re both ready for a change, right?”
Lana nodded and sighed. “He’s going downhill. If we move to be near him, it’s got to be soon. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll all have a few good years together.”
“I’ll call our real estate agent as soon as the plane lands, Sweetie. We can do this. We owe it to him.”
Lara looked out the window. “Maybe it will be good to get out of Dallas. We can live simply in that ocean resort. You’ll be retired and we’ll have each other. And we’ll have God.”
Nine months later they drove a large moving van up to a small white home in Florida. It was their dream house, with a screened-in patio in back, palm trees in the front and a sweet ocean breeze. The recent sale of their Texas property had made the move possible. Then the housing market began a sudden slide.
One morning Charlie pointed to a newspaper. “We got out just in the nick of time, Lana. Two more weeks and we’d never have sold the Texas house.”
Lana clutched the cross she wore around her neck. “God was in this. He helped us honor our one remaining parent.”
A few weeks after that, Lana got a new job in Miami at double her former salary in Texas. When she told her dad, the old man hugged her. “I’m proud of you, little girl.”
Lana felt her heart glow with joy. She didn’t remember ever hearing those words from him. Father and daughter had been estranged when she was young.
“We are definitely supposed to be here,” Charlie said later.
Charlie and his father-in-law began spending more time together while Lana was at work. Charlie had never known his own father, and the old man had never had a son. The family bonds between the three of them tightened in a way none of them had ever experienced before.
A joyful year passed, and they went out to celebrate. As they left the restaurant, a friend took their picture - all three of them arm-in-arm. Their compatibility was evident, even in the photo.
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve died and gone to Heaven.” Lana said that night to her husband. “I don’t miss anything we left behind.”
“Me either,” said Charlie. “Maybe this is what Heaven is like. Beauty all around us, no regrets and lots of love.”
They both laughed, and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving.
But six months later, the old man drove his car into a tree. He’d passed out at the wheel. They had just enough time to say goodbye and to give him the last rites. Then he was gone.
On the way home from the hospital, Lana and Charlie stopped to look at the crash site. He could just as easily have swerved into oncoming traffic.
“Lana, it could have been so much worse,” Charlie whispered to his sobbing wife.
She nodded and said between hiccups, “God... is still in this. I ho... He helps us to heal. We’re orphans now.”
A year after the old man’s death, they moved into his home, which seemed to improve their spirits. It seemed like a way to be closer to him. Lana began writing stories about her father’s adventuresome life.
Charlie began taking long naps while Lana was at work, and then they’d go swimming when she came home. He’d lived with chronic back pain for many years, but the naps and the warm water in the old man’s pool seemed to help.
Then came a simple spinal procedure to help Charlie with the pain, and it went terribly wrong. He was sent to Hospice. But to everyone’s surprise, he got better and was sent home. He was in a wheelchair, but it still seemed like a miracle.
They began planning for Christmas, and a trip to his hometown in the spring. But suddenly the pain broke through all his medication, and he asked to go back to Hospice. Two weeks later, Lana buried him beside her father.
The next day, sitting on the grass between them, she whispered, “God’s still in this. I know where you are. And I know you’re both happy. Save a place for me.”
750 words This is a true story.
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Your writing was exquisite in this moving tribute.
God Bless you~