Jim stepped off the curb. Rain continued to pour from the sky soaking the ground and a small stream of dirt and water, and other things unknown, flowed past in a blur. His step faltered and he fell clutching his side.
Jim impacted the hard black street with no energy to soften his fall. He fell like something already dead, slapping his head on the pavement, his right cheek hitting the ground like a hammer.
Images of his childhood flashed through his mind and confusion helped him to not fully face reality. Down deep he didn’t want to deal with what had happened. He couldn’t fathom the path his normally boring life had taken in the last 24 hours.
Memories of playing in the backyard of his childhood home filled his mind’s eye. A serene landscape of a green lawn bordered by flower patches and forgotten attempts to add a perimeter accent to an otherwise monotone grass-filled-yard played in his head. Images of acting out his favorite GI Joe scenes in the dirt and rocks made Jim smile and relax ever so slightly. His life was fading away, draining with the blood leaking out of the hole in his side.
As if in response, the scene changed. Gone was the green lawn and heroic GI Joe action figures and his mother flashed into view. A mother he had lost when he was nine. Jim hadn’t thought of his mom in years. And that image of her with her brown hair and pleasant smile snapped him back to the present.
Jim was a coward, at least when it came to facing his fears and emotions. He had never been able to deal with the loss of his mother. Down deep he was still bitter and hateful that she had been taken so early in his life and her’s. He knew she didn’t want to go. She fought. Fought through cancer and chemo. She battled for five years, but ultimately death won. In her final moments, as his mother took her last breath, Jim saw her fight, even then, angry and unwilling to go.
Jim’s family, his brothers and sister, were clueless. Or maybe they saw what they needed to see. They saw a woman go peacefully, ready to travel to the next. The next what? Jim didn’t see that. He didn’t accept that. He couldn’t. His mother was torn from his life and robbed of her own. His father robbed of their dream of retiring together and enjoying their last decades with each other. It was never to be. Life is cruel.
All this flashed through Jim’s mind in an instant and made him focus. He wasn’t going to go. Not here. Not now. He refused to fade, to die too early like his mother. And in that moment Jim changed. He grew. His fear didn’t fade. No. But his determination, his clarity of focus and will solidified and manifest into a power. A power to survive. To not give up here, in a gutter full of shit and filth.
Jim looked up and saw for the first time a path forward. A future without doubt and regrets. He saw hope and possibilities. And the image of his so strong mother remained clear in his mind.
He picked himself up, his left leg ragged and bruised from the fall. Clutching his bloody ribs on his right side, where the knife had entered, he managed to stand, and step. One step led to another and soon he was walking, albeit unsteadily, forward. Forward to his future, his past now only a memory.
He wouldn’t die here. Not yet.
