Never tell him that she’s gone

For six word story.

Sometimes love is a conspiracy of the heart over the mind. Looking back, maybe that’s the simplest explanation of how we could conspire against him so coldly over his last years.

I still don’t know how we kept it going for so long or even why. To protect him. To protect us from him. Or maybe to protect us from losing him too.

But from the very beginning he knew. And he knew that we knew that he knew – all of which made it harder to look into his soft blue eyes and tell him the lies we both wished were true.

I tried to avoid being alone in a room with him, for fear that the inevitable question would come up. My avoidance came less out of my disdain for the lies themselves than for who he was – a man, a good man, my grandfather – and what he deserved. The simple truth.

(unfinished short story)

empty wheelchair in hallway of Graduate Hospital ER, Philadelphia, PA.