by: Marty Chrisman
“We’ve got him back!” The voice said from a long distance away. Why didn’t they just be quiet and let him alone. He was dead, he heard them say so. He wasn’t supposed to come back. And the pain, so much pain, how could one man live and still be in so much pain. Jesse and the rest of the family was planning their funerals, he’d been there. He’d seen it. He’d seen them both lying in their coffins in the living room at farm. Was he crazy? Had his mind slipped over the edge without him realizing it? He just wanted to retreat back into the darkness where it was safe.
“Don’t you die on me, boy!” Uncle Jesse’s voice said gruffly in the same tone of voice he used when they were kids and in a lot of trouble. A voice that he had been conditioned since childhood to obey. And he had no choice but to obey. Death would have wait for another day. An alarm sounded shrilly as he drew a breath on his own, fighting the machine that was forcing air in and out of his lungs. Why didn’t somebody shut off that damn thing. It was giving him a worse headache than he already had. Maybe he really was still alive after all. It was all too confusing to try and figure out right now. It still all seemed so real in his mind. He could still feel the intensity of the pain and the suffering his family and friends had gone through because both of them were dead.
“Come on, sugar…please open your eyes.” Daisy. He could hear sweet Daisy’s voice begging him to wake up. He could tell that she was crying and he hated to make her cry. But he couldn’t seem to make his body do what he wanted it to do.
“Hey, buddyro……” Cooter’s voice. What was Cooter doing here? He sounded like he was crying too. Geez. He was making everybody cry. He struggled to find a way to let them know that he could hear them but it useless. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t make a sound. What had happened to him? Did they really crash into the side of the mountain, or was it just something that happened in his mind? The relentless pain in every part of his body told him that something had happened, something really bad.
He could feel the love in the room, surrounding him. The love of his family, a family that didn’t want to let him go and he knew that it was that love that was keeping him here and not letting him cross over to the other side. Even though he wanted to, he wanted to leave the pain behind but the strength of their love just wouldn’t let him go. The love of the family had always been the most important thing in his life, the one thing he knew he could always count on, and he knew that it was that love that was keeping him here now, lingering on a tight rope between life and death. He felt the darkness closing in around his mind again and he fought against it this time. Somehow, he knew if he let the darkness reclaim him now, he wouldn’t be given the chance to come back again.