Workshop One - Day Two ExerciseKalon Name: Barclay Grim Witherspoon
Link to Kalon: linkWrite about a time when your Kalon(s) lost something important or someone close to them: Barclay sat at his desk in the dormitory, hunched over a dark textbook with a soda in hand. He wished they could just get a lamp in the room, but for some reason his roommate made a necessity of using all of the available electrical plugs. It was irritating, really, when he was trying to study.
Barclay was eighteen years old, just been in college for six months. It was the dead of the night, somewhere between two or three a.m, perhaps when he got a call. "Barclay, dear," came a gentle voice from the other end of the phone.
Oh my lord. Barclay thought. It was his mother. Why would she dare be awake at this hour? Why was she using his real name, rather than any of the pet names he'd acquired as a child? Something must be wrong.
"Yes, mum?" he whispered cautiously.
"Well, uh... Here's the deal, hon. Your grandmother... she's..." he could almost feel his mother's throat crumple up. "She's not doing well, sweetie. I called to tell you to come to the hospital if you can. I'm sorry, I know you were probably busy, but... if you can spare the time."
"Of... course." Barclay had made it from his desk chair to the floor. The news was all too much. He knew it was coming, sure, his grandmother was old and sickly and tired. But he could never prepare for it. Thoughts came to him of his father, who had disappeared when he was young. This was like then. He would be loosing someone very, very important. And yet he'd spent so much of his life with his grandmother, and had but vague memories left of his father. This would be worse, he thought. Could it be worse? Is something like that really quantifiable?
Barclay ran to the hospital. Living in the city, you do stuff like that. You don't even own a car, you have a taxi to take you if you must. But usually, you walk. Now, Barclay ran.
He made it to his grandmother's room, his heart sick and racing with more than the effort of running. He smiled at her, trying to hide his fear. She weakly reached her hand out for him to take, and he sat down with her. By now Barclay's mother had left. She was never very good at stuff like this, and distance was sometimes how she showed she cared.
"Barclay... you're sad, my boy." She grinned at him, showing a few missing teeth. It was a reminder of how much she'd been through in her lifetime.
"I'm okay." he said, struggling to keep tears from running down his face.
"It's okay to be sad, Barclay. That's how life works. But you will be happy again one day, thinking of me. This is not such a big deal!" The old woman waved her hand to the side, dismissing the very concept of death and replacing it with her own odd, optimistic logic.
"Yeah, I will. But I will miss you, you know." he squeezed the hand he was holding, trying to do so not too harshly. His face felt pale and his heart felt black and inky.
"I'll miss you too." she said. She looked comfortable with tears rolling down her face. All so quickly she lost her optimistic touch. She gave up twisting the facts. They would miss each other.
"Be brave for me, dear, that's what I wanted to say. Someone else is missing you too, you have to find him."
Barclay understood. He nodded. "My father, yes. One day, I will."
A meager smile returned to Grandmother's face. "You'd better. That man promised for the last five times that he'd be making supper, never held up on that."
Barclay laughed.
The woman frowned as if suddenly turning bored. "Now go, son, there are a lot of people wanting to see me, you know."
Barclay turned around, observing the faces of already mourning relatives and friends.
"Oh... okay. I'll leave you alone then, right?"
"No!" Grandmum hissed. "Never alone. Never alone. Just in different company's all."
Barclay nodded solemnly. "Just in different company."
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