Trifecta Challenge: Light

You'll have to forgive me, I'm in a very somber nostalgic mood this morning. I'm Contemplating life and death and all that for reasons I won't get into.  That's probably why the latest Trifecta challenge triggered the following story. This week's trifecta challenge:

LIGHT (noun)

1a : something that makes vision possible
  b : the sensation aroused by stimulation of the visual receptors
  c : electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength that travels in a vacuum with a speed of about 186,281 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second; specifically : such radiation that is visible to the human eye
2a : daylight
  b : dawn
3: a source of light: as
   a : a celestial body
   b : candle   

   c : an electric light

 

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I can remember it clearly even if it was a dream. But sometimes dreams aren’t just dreams.

I was in my grandparents’ house. Grandma was having one of her episodes again. There was something about her ranting that would throw me into a seething rage. I know now that it wasn’t her fault, not really. She’d lost her partner in life and had just given up and decided to join him. Her mind and her body were in race to see who could get there first. But even in my dream I was mad at her for what she was becoming. I’m still not sure why. Blame it on my youth, on my hormones, on my own selfishness, I don’t know. 

The kitchen’s a mess and she’s pacing on the linoleum looking at me and crying in turns and I’m getting angrier.

Then I spot it in the hallway, just in the periphery of my vision. It was a small point of light, and then it burst open. At first I just saw the beams shooting off in thousands of directions like the sun streaking through the clouds after a thunderstorm.

Then it dissipated and he was there. I looked at him, tears in my eyes and immediately I feel the thoughts whirring, the millions of things I wanted to tell him before he passed that I never got a chance to. The pervading thought I kept coming back to is ‘I love you and I’m sorry.’ But I can’t even get that out.

But what I could or could not say didn’t seem to matter to him at all. He just walked toward me, hugged me the way he use to and whispered into my ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said as he squeezed me tighter.

Then I woke up. I don’t know if it was my grandfather, or something my subconscious made up to give me closure. All I know is sometimes, dreams aren’t just dreams.

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The above story is 330 words.