Dragonfly by Jaxn Hill

We made a picnic in the park. It was Saturday and a lot of suburban families were doing the same. We sat on a little green slope that rolled down toward a duck pond, and after lunch, Torstein started telling a story.

“Once upon a time there was a typical suburban family with a mommy, a daddy and two children. They had a dog and a cat and a mortgage the could manage, an SUV that was paid for and a BMW financed at a low 3.5%. They were very happy.”

Some kids had been rolling down the grassy slope toward the duck pond, but then they began to move in close and hear the story.

“Every day the daddy went off to work at 7 a.m. and the mommy got the kids up and ready for school. Then she cleaned up the house, organized the dinner she would cook later that night, and went for her tennis lesson. At four o’clock she picked up the kids, helped them with their homework and started dinner cooking. At six p.m. the daddy would call to say he would be late and not to hold dinner, and then at nine she put the kids to bed and waited for the daddy so she could re-heat his dinner and sit with him while he ate it.”

By now some of the parents of the suburbanite kids had joined the crowd listening to the story.

“It was a good life and it probably would have gone on for many years, interrupted only by fabulous vacations to DisneyWorld and occasional bouts of melancholy until one day the Mommy was diagnosed with a terminal illness. She had just one year to live. Everyone was very sad! They cried and cried. The mommy tried to be strong and keep everything as normal as possible for the kids. Then she realized: in just one year, she would be separated from them! Would they remember her? What would they think about her? Would they care that she always had dinner ready at 6 p.m.? What would they tell their own children about her?

“The mommy realized, keeping everything as normal as possible was the last thing she wanted for her last year on earth. And the daddy agreed. If there was just one year left for them to be together, he didn’t want to waste one minute of it on their normal routine. They sold the house, sold the Beamer, moved in with grandma and grandpa, squandered their savings so dad could quit his job and spend one amazing year with his wife, just playing with their children and loving each other.”

Sully was not liking this story, you could tell. The little brow was wrinkled across his tiny forehead. He liked the idea of playing with the kids every day and loving each other, but the reason for it all — the dying mommy — that sounded harsh.

“Did the mommy die?” he asked.

Torstein grimaced a little.

“In a way, yes, she did. She got weaker and sicker, and one day she died. But in another way, she lived much longer than other mommies, because her memory shined so brightly in the minds of her children and husband and parents. After the funeral, the family was poor. The daddy had to try to get some new, better job, and they had to move into an apartment in the city rather than their nice suburban home. He drove the paid-for SUV instead of his plush BMW. But he and the kids had something they’d never had before ... they really knew for the first time just who the mommy had been, and what a wonderful woman she was. They missed her more than ever, but they knew she’d loved them more than anything. And at the end of her life, the mommy had something she’d never had before, too. She was able to say that for this one year, she’d really lived, and she’d really loved. Which in the end is the same thing.”

Sully still wasn’t convinced that this was a good story.

“Did the Daddy get the kids a new mommy?” he asked.

“I suppose so,” Torstein said. “But this time, he found a lady who already knew how much more important it is to love, and to be loved, than to have a nice home in the suburbs and a tennis lesson every Thursday. It doesn’t take a terminal illness to teach that lesson ... we can all learn it, today.” He paused and smiled at Sully, then said, “Now, who wants some sunflower seeds?”

Most of the suburban parents who’d stopped to hear the story now took their kids by the hands and led them away. They hadn’t liked the story much, and they didn’t want their kids taking sunflower seeds from strangers.