Week Two Assignment

I decided to use John's Walk as my inspiration to my first short story ever! I have not seen the movie it's from but it was so beautiful and so fitting as it made me think of my cousin John who was shot in the line of duty and died 52 days later. This is what my story is about. I'm sure that I've probably broken every rule there is to writing stories as I've never done this before so truly let me know what to change or do differently! I love to learn!

Here it is!

John’s Long Walk Home

These cold and cruel winter months are longer than they’ve ever been before. There are moments when I see the sun trying in vain to let me know that it is still there; that the world is still turning. Yet every thing that surrounds me tells me otherwise. It has been eight long weeks since John’s walk brought us all here where the air is thick with a crushing sadness and unspeakable grief.

They tell us to keep praying, that there’s hope and truly I believe in God. There is a reason for everything. I know in my heart that there are many lessons that I will learn from this pain but most assuredly; I know that God will make this right. God will not let John leave us way before his time. God is a loving and caring God and Christ, John in only 37 years old! Clara is so young, 10 years old and so smart and Molly, well she’s just 18 months old. Surely God will not let these girls grow up not knowing their Daddy. That would make God a vicious and cruel being and then everything I think I know would be wrong.

Suddenly I am overwhelmed with wracking grief. I have moved myself out of the see of blue uniforms that have surrounded us day after day, week after week. The sheer numbers of Albany police and fire department personnel aching to help us in anyway they can is both comforting and stifling.

I leave and begin the two and a half hour drive home to my own husband and children and feeling torn between three worlds. I am brought back to my own childhood loss and am now missing and grieving all these years later, the father I never really knew. Fighting the urge to turn the car around and return to the hospital where my cousin lay fighting to return to the life that he knew, I speed on to get home to the loving arms of my own small children and wrap myself in the strong arms of my own husband who is not fighting for every breath of life.

They say there are life-defining moments and we must make sense of them; learn from them, or go on with life as we knew it, pretending that we have not been changed. I have lived this later way of life to get through the pain of losing my father at age 4. At 44 with 9 children and a wife, cancer had other plans for my father. Unable to understand God’s plan then and unable to talk about this loss with a mother who was too strong to do anything other than dig deep and move on, I did not learn how to cope. I just moved forward, never looking back.

John, though, was like a brother to me. He was someone who I always knew loved me unconditionally. I don’t remember a time, ever in my life, when he told me that. I just always knew. That’s the way family is sometimes. His kindness and love was like that. Everyone has been recounting the stories of the ways in which he has changed who he or she is in life. Losing John’s love: that is the overwhelming loss. If I allow myself to think about it, I know that John is not going to make it through this shooting. His body is failing him. When I sit with him and talk to him, or we listen to music, I feel him respond once in a while. I see a look that makes me question, “Do you hear me John?” Are you there?” I need so desperately to tell him how much I love him and that I will always remember how he was one who made me feel loved and free to be who I am.

When it was time to say goodbye to John, family and friends whom he had loved and who loved him dearly surrounded him. As his wife and babies lay in the hospital bed with him and we all said goodbye, and then later as over ten thousand showed up to mourn and grieve the loss of a father, a husband, a son, a brother, a cousin, an uncle, a fellow officer, I knew that God had lessons for me to learn. I knew more clearly then that John was an example of Gods love on earth. I knew it more than I know it now.

As time passes and there is space and distance between the family and the ordeal that was Johns shooting in the line of duty and his impending death, I cannot make sense of it all. I still feel an all-consuming void where there was once understanding and certainty. My life has become chaos and confusion and I no longer look to God to help me through. I look out for God to deal me another blow. I live in the cold and cruel reality of winter every single day.

Week 1 Here's my "A New Beginning"

Assignment #1 (2.15-2.21): A New Beginning by Christine Ellen Leary
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Click the link below to get to the Web Site where you can find the recording. Click on Week 1 when you get there and you can see the lyrics and listen to the terrible recording!!

Click Here

Always waiting just to start
Thinking, planning; works of art
I am stuck here in this place that never moves

It’s the magic that I love
It is sent from up above(don’t love this line)
Like to think that I am right where I belong

Been along time since I knew
Where to look for what is true
Looking back I see, I never looked inside

Chorus:
Counting the days,
Counting the years
Counting the dreams
Counting the tears
Taking an honest look at who I have become

Seeing myself
Seeing it all
Opening up
Ready to fall
Taking and honest look at all I’ve left undone

There’s only one

There are things that I have done
Some I’ve failed and some I’ve won
I have learned more than I ever really knew

I have loved and I have lost
I have learned and I have taught
What I need to do is learn to love myself

Chorus:
Counting the days,
Counting the years
Counting the dreams
Counting the tears
Taking an honest look at who I have become

Seeing myself
Seeing it all
Opening up
I’m Ready to fall
Taking and honest look at all I’ve left undone

I am the one

Bridge:

Who makes the dream become the truth
I am the one
Who takes the bad and makes is good
I am the one
Who can love so hard it hurts when it is lost
I am the one……
That I’ve become

Chorus:
Learning the days,
Living the years
Nurturing dreams
Drying the tears
Taking an honest look at who I have become

Seeing myself
Seeing it all
Opening up
Ready to fall
Taking and honest look at all I’ve left undone

There’s only one (or maybe “I am the one” or “I’m only one?”)