Worrywart

Edgar and Joyce Kittman spent 95% of their 89 years of life together. Do the math, that’s an awful long time.  (In this particular circumstance, the adjective ‘awful’ is used as a lenghty stretch of time and not as dreadful indicating that both were happy and content with each other.)

Now Joyce was in a hospice wasting away with pancreatic cancer they didn’t catch on time, and was sick:  less from the chemo treatments she endured before her oncologist called it hopeless,  sick mostly with worry about how her husband will fend for himself after she was gone.  The poor old gal had been a worrywart all her life:

As a toddler she worried about getting potty-trained before the age of two; not messing up her A-through-Zs in kindergarten; if a cute classmate named Edgar was ever going to sit next to her in the story-time semi-circle.

In high school about her grades, her complexion, and clothes; if he boyfriend, Edgar, was going to propose to her after graduation.

After he did propose, about the mortgage; their three kids;  his job security.

Once he retired about keeping the house or selling it, their six grandkids, aging gracefully. 

Now while drawing her final breaths:

He’ll be helpless without me, she worried with the last of her dying brain cells: will he sell the house then surrender his old bones to a nursing home? What if he starts flirting with some of the single gals there? Or worse? Or will he stay at our house of nearly seven decades? Who’s going to clear out all our clothes and possessions, Edgar can barely lift an arthritic finger these days?  Who will wash his back, hold his hand through a night of television?  Hug him good night? No widows need apply!

Joyce exhaled a deep shiver and kept worrying about her husband until the end:

If the kids and grandkids lived closer they would help him along with his daily life, but they aren’t. How will Edgar get food? Meals-on-Greased-Up-Wheels delivery? Drive to the store or restaurant, god forbid? Who will cook him breakfast, lunch and dinner? Does he even have the fire department's phone number should he start the kitchen ablaze? Could his old arthritic legs carry him out of the house fast enough in the ensuing inferno to not be cremated before dying, unlike myself?

She lightly squeezed his hand as the farewell kiss that she knew had come, closed her eyes...  and kept on worrying:

How will he pay for my funeral? How will he take living alone in a house full of memories? How well won’t he take care of his health?

Joyce Kittman shuttered; then died.

She was surprised to see her vacated body laying dead, and Edgar slumped beside it as her soul floated towards the ceiling bound for another world.  Looking upward she was very much surprised to see her husband’s spirit floating on the ceiling along beside her!

What are you doing up here, Edgar, Dear?  she asked in gobsmacked telepathy.

Lucky me! I died of a coronary just thirty seconds ago!  My dearest Darling. I’ve a confession to make—I’ve been hiding a very serious heart condition the past few years. Clogged up arteries. Didn’t want to worry you as we had enough of that with your cancer.  What opportune timing!  Let’s blow this joint!

Their spirits sprang off together without a worry in the world—at least in the world they had just sprung from.

By CraigE

From: United States