Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Day One Hundred Eight: "I Couldn't Have Dreamed It" by Christopher Coe

Faith. Wake-up.

A woman shows up on her son's doorstep after a gypsy tells her she has one year left to live. With bags packed, she stays at her son's house for one last night and talks of the travels she is about to undertake, explaining that she had no problem spending the rest of her life with her husband, her son's father, but that she couldn't stomach spending the end of her life with him. Her son and his wife try to come to terms with his mom's decision and in turn, examine their own life together and where it is headed and why.

I will say, this story's conclusion is one of the most poignant and heartbreaking ending's I've ever read. Talk about a profound story with so many layers that I'm not sure I fully comprehended all that was going on with just one reading. Sadly, I don't know that I can read this again, not yet. It's a lot to digest, especially if you are a woman, and especially if you are a woman struggling with her own identity, with loneliness, with how to live in the midst of all of it.

Breaks my heart. I wept at this ending. That's all I can say about it for now.

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