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Sweet is the past Τhe man she buried is back and knocking — from her bed, though unable to rise, she tried to peek through the wind blinds that covered the window next to the door, which lead to the hospital's mundane alleyway. No trace of her son or her sister in law or her terminally sick husband, who often visited her as of late. No trace of any unfriendly nurse or doctor from those who only care to collect blood, like hunger striken vampires, and then disappear without a word of kindness. It was only she, the slow breeze that could be felt all the more, since her hospital room was located on the seventh floor, the agonizing knocks that wouldn't cease, although it had been two days since they started, and the scattered pieces of paper where she saved scarce memories which would come and go, whenever they saw fit. A mirror located at the opposite wall told of her old tales, and, on each white strand of hair, on each aching bone, one could read, much like on the mostly unreadable notes which she kept, stories of hunger, wars, hardship. Mostly, pain. The pain of loss, of terror, of the longing for survival, came to an almost poetic contrast when one took into account the place where they were being held captive - a white, almost off putting neoteric hospital room gave the impression that the woman, who had witnessed war planes flying over her house, vanishing entire villages, eating once every two days and washing even less often than that, was not one to be kept in such a place. A contrast - as was mentioned before - between the old world and the new one. The new world couldn't have been built without the old world's sacrifices. The old world, on the other hand, couldn't exist within the new one, almost as if it was expected to justify its existence. Thus, the old woman on the seventh floor of the hospital building was an oxymoron that made one feel pity.    Battling dementia and her most recent injuries due to an accident at home, she, (for the sake of the story let's call her H.) a stout woman late into her eighties, with three children, only one of whom lived close by, a decent husband and a seemingly average life, hadn't let go of the horrors which plagued her small town (and, of course, the entire country) during the First World War. H. was but a young woman when the ordeal began. That young woman, of course, she claimed to be a foreigner. How could she see herself in the portrait of a woman full of life, minds full of dreams that would only be fulfilled in the abrupt summer dreams of those nights when the dose of her medications was higher than usual? How could she reignite the fire that the beautifully portrayed woman felt for her then betrothed, his name forgotten, who had served and fallen without as much as a honorary mention, let alone a statue or a street named after him? Promises which had seem to the young individual on the partially ruined photograph as big as life itself had lost their weight in the battle against time - if you asked H., anything that had happened before the war or even shortly after it was an insignificant part of her life that wasn't worth mentioning. To her husband, she was a simple being with a singularly dimensioned personality and commendable abilities at housework matters. To her family, her early years were unknown, the pathos with which she anticipated her childhood love, whom she vowed to marry, insignificant and immature, her energetic self lost to what her peers would envy as the "perfect life". An average woman, with an average family and well behaved children. A husband who never drank or engaged in any shenanigans, and, what's more, who provided significantly while she tended to family matters. A respectable presence.   And yet, when dementia injected its unforgiving nails into her aging skin, all that she could even slightly remember wasn't the names of the young people who were presented to her as her own offspring, nor the old, kind man who visited her and called her darling with a sweet and endearing tone. These beings were introduced to her after she broke her hip in the stairs and woke up in this disagreeable room, and she was scary and lonely and expected to love  them. Even worse, not loving them sounded like a criminal offense since she didn't have an alibi - they were truly loving and sweet as can be, but they weren't hers to love. In short, she couldn't love them. The paranoia of them being foreigners who sought to inherit her bits was quickly diminished by two simple facts: first of all, she hadn't any property to be particularly proud of. Secondly, there were irrefutable pieces of evidence, primarily, pictures, which proved the legitimacy of their words. And then, which power possessed her, she asked herself, to only think of certain scenes, certain scents, certain physiognomies from the past, whenever the ability to remember resurfaced? &nbsp;Memory 1st:Walking alone, at night, through a moldy and misty cemetery, carrying a little something covered in cloth. It stunk and I was shaking and tearing uncontrollably while kissing it - albeit it seemed repulsive. - stop -&nbsp;The memories of this young woman full of energy and passion surely didn't fit with what she could deduce when looking at herself in the mirror, and, if she hadn't felt the pain that this memory emanated, if the piece of paper hadn't been practically destroyed by the weight of her tears whilst recording such a memory, she would've thought of it as a symptom of insanity. What was she holding? Why did the cemetery look so eerie, so overcrowded, and why could she sense the smell of burnt matter everywhere around her?    More shocking memories that visited H. included sights of military raids, a feeling of fire inside her lungs from running for too long, a sense of adrenaline when in hiding. Fear for her family, her long lost family which had raised her. Yet, the most peculiar ones involved a certain feeling of agony, a certain unwillingness to continue survival. Whenever desperation came to her, memories of what she assumed to be a long lost love came to life. It was after pitiful moments of small fights with the nurses over what was being served, after receiving the most bitter medicine or being embarrassingly changed into a new diaper by demeaning caregivers, that she received flashes of her old life most vividly. &nbsp;Memory something The old train station seemed way busier and I seemed particularly disheartened to be there. Holding my waist and kissing my head, making my hair almost wet, a young man, a face blurred out, whispered words of love and encouragement to me. A tingling sensation of safety covered by body although I don't remember what the weather was like. As he slowly detached himself from me I felt my face burning and my chest unable to translate inhales into exhales. I screamed something, ran to the wagon where he was heading and kissed him frantically again and again - he did the same and we were both sobbing on the verge of hysterics. He - whoever he was - left, with military clothes and what I believe to be an attempt to persuade me that he would come back alive. Promises that filled my heart as my brain simultaneously poked holes into it, reminding me that no one would return alive and well, especially low ranks of the like. Desperate attempts were made to pull him back, take him somewhere away, keep his warmth close by. From what I remember he left. No memories of his return have come to me yet. - stop -&nbsp;For the last two days, however, H. was unable to think of anything short of the obnoxious knocking that interrupted her string of thought. No one else heard the knocks - that she could understand from their lack of reaction - and each bang was rhythmically accurate to the beat of her ill heart. If she could get up, slap the intruder, let him know that this interruption was unacceptable, she would have. Alas, she was stuck, as if chained, on that annoyingly comfortable mattress with nowhere else to be. Between 12 o'clock in the morning and 9 o'clock at noon, the tedious visits of people that she was supposed to know took place, and then, the knocking, once more, became noticeable. Just as before, H. ignored it and gave in to sleep again, breathing soundly between the knocks. At the moment when conscience crosses the gate and gives way to the most peculiar of dreams, her eyes opened to the graveyard once more, her hands now busy holding something she adored. She kept on crossing the distance exactly from where she left off when her memory abruptly came to an end (meanwhile, two parallel rainstorms were taking place; one concealing the sound of the knocks and another soaking her entire body as she headed somewhere unknown). The only thing protected from the rain - at least, partially - was the object that she was holding. Her eyes on it, she dared not uncover it from the cloth. Now she realized. Upon returning, the remaining soldiers took to the main square, roughly a day earlier, with a carriage carrying God knows what. Names were called. When presented, each citizen was given a package; some were bigger, others significantly smaller. Even worse, some people only received handshakes when met with the soldiers. Then came her turn. As the betrothed of a man without kin, she held the rights to what was left of him. A severed arm with parasites already consuming its rot. From then, the memory unexplainably placed her in the cemetery, holding what she had received after sleeping with it and kissing it and wiping her weeping eyes with its faded fingers and placing it near the fireplace in a desperate attempt to bring it to life. If one saw her walking, it would've been suggested that she was holding a baby, perhaps her own, given the love with which it was sweetly caressed. Inside her head, each raindrop produced images of what she had already lost, images of what would never be again. The damage couldn't be undone, the arm, he, laying elsewhere, all of his were lifeless, including the woman whose steps were incoherent and whose mouth produced small incoherent syllables which only she understood. The ground was wet and easy to dig with her bare fingernails. A hole, undeserving to hold such a loved human being, swallowed the corpse remains and stared back into the woman who hadn't even a flower with her to leave so as to signify that something which used to be alive was now hiding from the sun rays into the mud. Her eyes, as lifeless as those of her lover's who lay somewhere away, maybe already decayed into matter, shifted from the ground and she found herself walking back. After some distance, dog barks rose above the sounds of rain. Three horror inducing hounds could be sighted running towards the woman who smelled like death - yet, they crossed paths with her and stopped where she had previously been. A purpose of life, the will to protect what was still left electrocuted her entire body and H. found herself running back. Running, running, unable to stop the already feasting hungry beasts, she awoke before reaching her purpose. H. was tearful and screaming and the need for comfort wasn't heard through the storm, and so she remained alone, crying and hugging a pillow like a child. At that moment, she felt not like an elderly woman, but like someone's little one who needed a pat of reassurance, a hug, in short, someone to shoo away the nightmare which was her life. Amid tears, she could smell dirt all around her. It was then that she became aware of the knocks again and, painfully crawling to the door, she ignored the knife-sharp aches that made her growl with each step. It was seventeen of those painful steps before she reached the destination and, laying the entire weight of her body on the door knob, H. fell back as the door opened. Suddenly, a loud, beeping sound overshadowed every other sensation that her body could receive. There was no rain, no dirt, no pain, only this loud, continuous beep. Her eyes wide open, mouth unable to form words, stared back at the eyes whose owner had reached to help her rise again. A young man, smiling and illuminating and intoxicating, heavenly light, carefully pulled her now much lighter body and gave her a tender kiss on the forehead. Then, as the clock stopped ticking and the notion of reality stopped holding any meaning to it, the man who smelled like home softly whispered: "At last, it is time for us to go.”

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Sweet is the past

Melina.11

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Sweet is the past

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