Gates of Memory – Strategy Gone Wrong

At the gates of memory, we remember the good times.  But sometimes, we also dwell longer than we should on moments when our best laid strategies go awry.  There was this time when I met a girl I wanted to impress.  She asked me to teach her the game of chess.  Turns out that was just her being coy.  She had the moves that she started to employ.  Suddenly, I knew I had been bested without even so much as any effort.

I smiled at her recognizing that had led me around that board a few times instead of going in directly for a kill stroke.  I tried to feign being upset.  Blustering a little did not go far. She was on to me.

My older sister meant everything to me.

Years later she was stricken by cancer.  She hoped her little brother might have some sort of answer.  She told me that I had always been the smart one.  Reminding me of how I would pore through book after book, even reading the encyclopedia through every few years just to catch up on facts that had changed.  Funny thing about facts, they only work as long as they do and then new facts come along.  Long and short of it, I came up short on the answers.

Very short.

I will never forget how she fought so valiantly for nine years.  My hero proved more of a hero every passing day.

One day, her tone changed.  She called me up and led me through a conversation that went all over the place.  Reminding me of how I had always tried to make her smile and told her bad jokes.  Telling me that she knew what I never talk about – what I had done in the service.  That most family members did and just respected that I chose never to talk about it and so they did not either.

She told me that I had always been her hero. Telling me her version of things that happened when we were small and some creep had attacked her in an abandoned silo.  How she had seen the man pick me up as I tried to pull him off of her and how she had seen it all.  I had landed midair against the silo knowing that I was no match for that man.  She saw me run like the wind.  Her thought at the time had been that at least I would survive this day.

What a surprise I had been running like the wind.  She said she had been glad that it seemed that I was saving my own skin.  She didn’t feel any blame.

What a surprise it had been that I had come back and so fast carrying my father’s loaded shotgun.  Me  – all of maybe eight or nine – doing my best impression of being a man.  I had come back locked, loaded and ready to take this man out of the world if need be.  My mother came running after me wondering and scared of what sort of trouble I had gotten myself into, insisting that I put down the gun.

The man ran to his car as fast as his feet could carry him.  I had fired one barrel into the air.  My mom seeing what was really going on grabbed the shotgun from me and unloaded into the rear of the man’s car.  I had dropped to my knees and begun scrawling the guy’s license plate identification into the dirt.

My sister reminded me of all of this.  As I listened, I began to wonder where she was going with all of this.

She told me she hurt.  She hurt worse than she had ever hurt in her life.  She was tired.  So, very tired.

I listened and the best I had was to tell her how much I loved her.  How I wish to God I could take her place.  After a couple of years of sarcoidosis, I was use to pain.  And anyhow that pain had never meant that much to me.  It was just a thing to deal with. And between my illness, my life and now my ex wife, I was use to dealing.

We laughed a little.

A sudden turn toward being serious and she told me that she needed to know that I would be alright if she let go.  That no treatment would help her at that point.

The call was actually to make sure she and I could say goodbye.  She needed to know that I would be alright.

I told her that there was no goodbye.  That I would see my favorite cowgirl on the other side and she had better learn the lay of the land up in heaven.  I would expect her to take me horseback riding at least once more.  There would be no goodbye.  Only that I would pray and hope for some sort of miracle that she would make it through this.  And that if not, I would somehow be a good enough man to make it up to heaven some day too.  But, there was no goodbye.  There was only I would see her later.

She told me she loved me. Told me that I had always been her hero.  Then silence.

I tried to call her back the next day.  I needed to hear her voice one last time.

She was dead.

Checkmate, sis….

I miss you

(strategy gone wrong was the original title for this photo)