Christmas Hallie Monologue

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Blurs of trees, bleached by a dash of December’s flurries, rush past my window at 74 miles per hour on Carroll road; Harsh late-day sun refracts off of the condensation, packed into down pillows cradled by asphalt. I am being smothered by the whiteness.
“Can we go home, Mom?” This isn’t my voice. In fact, it’s a whimper that squirmed its way past my consciousness, belonging to maybe a nine or ten year old self.
“It’s Christmas, Hallie! Of course, not—its family time, and that means we are going to spend time with our family.” My mom responds, turning up the volume of my most hated Christmas song, “Christmas Shoes”. I sulk selfishly, arms crossed, squinting at the grey dust bunnies nomadic in the skies.
As much as it fills me with hatred …show more content…

Did you get that letter jacket yet?” He ponders with a subtle excitement. His eyes glimmer a dull yet magnificent grey, worn out train tracks that once led steam engines whirring to their destinations, but now lay forgotten and rusted, a sad reminder of the way life used to be long ago.
“It’s good, thanks. Yeah, I got my letter jacket, thank you so much.” I smile tightly. I quit swimming nearly five months prior to this visit, and have reminded him every other time besides this one.
“When I was your age, I had a letter jacket of my own. It was for--”
An abrupt halt, a barricade in his train track eyes, and the tracks are too rusted for his endlessly turning wheels. I look away in discomfort, toothless smile pressed firmly into my mouth, unsure of what to do. As I slop my spoon through my swampy ice-cream-apple-pie-combo, my step grandma rescues me from my floundering with one of her over-possessively rude remarks.
“Jim, that’s too much ice cream! Who scooped you that much?” she crows, snatching the plate away from the table. Looking at his face forced tears to flood my eyes, drowning my self-indulgent behavior in sorrow. I had never seen that deep a sadness on anyone’s face before. My grandpa’s eyes drift down in embarrassed …show more content…

I’m not sure if or when it will end. All I do know is that Parkinson’s disease has a full-fisted grip on the collar of my grandpa’s shirt, and he is forgetting how it feels to live. How selfish I have become, ignoring my grandpa in a time in which he needs people who love him the most. But I can’t help it. Is it the inelegance of our interactions? Is it a daunting sense of superiority over a frail human being who has seen better days? Is it because we have been taught to pity those who have been struggling? I am not sure if it is one or any of these things, but the one thing I do know is that I am afraid. How can a disease be so brutally unforgiving, so devastatingly controlling, that it has taken away the ease of the one thing that we as humans enjoy and use to our advantage: free

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