The Uncharted Past

The man peeled himself from the old innerspring mattress with a permanent disgruntled

expression glued to his face. His bones ached, his veins bulged from his frail limbs, his wispy

white hair sat wafted to one side as a byproduct of his long slumber. Next to the single bed, there

was a nightstand with an old and worn lamp perched atop its dust-coated dark oak. Beside it sat a

picture frame, placed meticulously at a 25 degree angle facing the bed. The paper under the

frame’s glass casing depicted a young man and woman. The woman was his sister, whom he

cherished in eternal siblinghood.

She had lasted almost as long as he, lived to see her daughter grow and carry on the

family line, lived a life full of contentment and prosperity. His wife–who had gotten along well

with his sister–had never wanted kids, despite his yearning. Towards the end, he respected his

wife’s choice, but still felt as though he had missed something.

No matter. He got to his feet, using the edge of the nightstand to hoist himself upwards

and prevent himself from collapsing to the cold wooden floor. He slowly made his way to the

kitchen just a room or two down. The floorboards creaked with each inelegant, disproportionate

step he took.

He sat with his eyes out the window across the table upon which he sat, whilst he chewed

away at the stale cereal in front of him. The man resided in a cabin surrounded by trees and

wildlife, with only a thin sliver of path leading to the nearby town where he collected his

necessities and the various medications he took to keep himself in good health. Seeing no farther

than a few inches, the world was a blur until he mustered up the sense to perch his spectacles

atop his wrinkled nose.

Eventually, he gave up on the stale bowl of bland mush that one could at one point have

called breakfast and headed over the sink to rinse out the bowl. It would be of use at a later hour.

With an ambition and lust that he had seldom experienced those days, the elder headed

out the door for the dock, cane in hand, glasses slightly crooked on his face. The dock was a

special place. It was one where he and his wife had shared many fond memories together

towards the end of her life when they decided upon spending the rest of their time surrounded by

wilderness and water; by nothing but peace and undeniable beauty in a world where everything,

the good and the bad, faced imminent destruction as though at the peak of an insurmountable

mountain, a state of mind by which the couple were perpetually bound.

The man sat down at the edge dock slowly, in an attempt to preserve his strength for later

when times called for it. He slipped off his slides. His legs spread over the edge, exposing his

gnarly toes to the warm cold of the lake water. He closed his eyes and tried to relive his life, to

relive all the revels of his past. He thought of his sister, he thought of his niece, he thought of his

family, of his line, of his childhood. Yet nothing seemed to satisfy him, for he had already

re-experienced all of these events so many times they had lost their taste, they had become dull

and modified in all the ways he did or didn’t wish them to be.

He sighed. Things would never be the same. And so he used his mind to create a

landscape that was more than the same-old same-old, that had meaning beyond the confines of

one’s mind. He imagined a sunny hillside full of lush green grass where he, his sister, his wife

and niece were enjoying a picnic atop one of the tapestries his wife had knitted. They had

PB&Js, apples, chips, berries, dips, pickles, they had each other, they had everything they could

possibly want and need, and all their worries seemed to fade away into nothingness, the same

nothingness that would soon consume them.

The idea brought up something inside the man’s mind: perhaps this was all a ruse, and he

was living in it; perhaps it was not he who grieved his wife, but it was she who grieved her

husband. The man smiled.

This is paradise, he thought. No matter how real it is, this is paradise.