Sophie is a memory

��������I watch her.
��������It might be everyday, but I can't be sure. I can't tell time anymore. I see her laughing and crying. Playing and working. I am always there. I hope she knows it, I hope she can feel me when I put my arms around her. When I kiss her good night. When I hold her hand.
��������Times for Sophie are getting easier. She can go days and laugh on some of those days. Those are the days I don't think I can see her. I go somewhere that is a place of only waiting. I wait until she calls me back and she needs me. A memory that grows like a dawn, until it's washing over her again and all that the memory contains is happiness. All that the memory brings to Sophie is wretched pain. I think it may be that pain that is actually calling me, I need to hug her, kiss her, and let her know that everything is alright.
��������Between the place where I wait and where Sophie is, that's the memory. It whisks me into it and I find myself reliving her memories. As we both go along, her memories of me fade. I relive certain things less and less. Conversations that were crystal clear are now muffled and all that is left are visions of her. The same way that Sophie must see me in her mind's eye. I think that's why I can't be sure of how long I've been with her. As she forgets, I forget, in forgetting, I can only wait.


��������We walked in a park, holding hands. She was dressed in blue. Blue knit cap, blue coat to protect against the wind, blue knitted mittens, blue scarf, blue jeans, blue boots. She always wore mittens and not gloves. Sophie still believed in the string that ran through the sleeves and tied her mittens together.
��������At our home, there was a small coat rack that hung heavy with her mittens. The coat rack itself was a homemade affair. Made from a tree that had been peeled and varnished. The branches of all different sizes reached out in no real pattern. On top of all that was her decorations of wool. All different colours, but all home made. It was a christmas tree of mittens and scarves. During the warm months, she take her scarves and mittens off, bag the ones up that she still wanted. The rest, Sophie would drop off somewhere where people who needed them might use them.
��������One cold winter day, we saw one of her little creations on a ragged man walking up the street. Sophie knew it had to be a pair she had made, it was black with a wide zigzag white stripe. The man didn't walk with his head down, but strode with purpose. He wasn't smiling, but you could feel that he felt as if he had purpose again. One of the mittens hung from his sleeve and he had something clutched in his bare hand. Sophie took my hand, she was wearing a pair of her mittens, then began tugging at me to keep up. We wove in and out of the people walking along the street. When we caught up, which was a struggle, the man was in a rush.
��������"Mister!" Sophie pulled me along trying to catch him up.
��������"Mister! Sir! Pardon me." Sophie apologized to someone as we brushed past.
��������Finally she got within reach and tugged on the man's dirty jacket.
��������"Mister."
��������He turned and cringed away from her touch a little, lifting his arm as if to ward off some forthcoming attack. His eyes flicked over to mine, trying to make out what we might want from him. He looked to be just hitting his late forties, maybe low fifties. But you could see that deep in his eyes was another man. Maybe the man he once was and was trying to be again.
��������"No, I..." Sophie looked down at her hand and brought her hand up to her mouth and bit the end of the mitten then pulled it off.
��������She held her hand up and let the mitten hang down by the string. A small smile crossed the man's face. His face brightened and he held up his hand, his own mitten dangling. I could see that he had a piece of paper in his hand.
��������"You," he looked down at the mitten, then brought it up higher so he could look at it, "you made this?"
��������"Yep, I remember knitting that one."
��������"I took this one because it had a string on it."
��������"It looks good on you." Sophie smiled.
��������"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm going to be late." He straightened his back, someone who gladly took the weight of the world again, that look said.
��������"Where you headed?" Sophie asked.
��������"Bank. I'm getting a bank account today." He held up a rectangle of paper and grinned.
��������Without hesitation, Sophie threw herself at him and threw her arms around his neck. He playfully let out a little 'whoof' and laughed.
��������"Must've been the gloves!" The man said and patted Sophie's back.
��������"I hope so, okay, you better get going." Sophie stepped back.
��������"You take care of this one!" He cocked his head and looked at me.
��������I nodded, it was all I could do. We watched him turn and keep walking up the street. Sophie looked up at me and closed her eyes, then she smiled up at the sky.


That's the way I remember it, Sophie mostly remembers what my hand felt like in hers. She remembers me smiling and watching the guy walking. Sophie can remember seeing a little bit of tears welling up in my eyes. That's the part that makes her break down. She doesn't know special she is, that the little bit of caring she puts out there makes the world a better place. She doesn't realize that it's not really the man that makes me so happy, it's her. She doesn't realize that I always feel so lucky.
��������I kneel beside her, she's sitting at the kitchen table with her head cradled in her arms. I put my arm around her shoulders and whisper in her ear that everything is okay. That she has to be strong. Then I find myself in the place of waiting. Sophie's okay.


��������At the beginning, the memories that Sophie had of me, kept me at her side. It was always a torrent of memories raining down on her. She couldn't only be around people for so long, wanting to be alone. I think that may be when she felt me the most. I had to be there because she called me there. It was rare that she'd smile during those times. I broke her heart when I left, it broke mine that I couldn't make her feel better.
��������The first night was the worst. I had been on a business trip, in the cold winter, rainy days of the place I was driving back from, I got a flat tire. It wasn't dark, but it was getting close to dusk. The road I was on was almost empty. Driving back home on a near deserted road was the way I liked it. Less crazy people.
��������The tire blew, I managed to wrestle the car over to the side of the road. I was lucky that it was a straight stretch. There was a rest stop ahead, I did a little mental juggling and decided I'd rather not risk getting rear ended as I crept along slowly in my crippled car. I pulled up the emergency brake and hit the hazard lights. Looking out the windows, I was in for a little soaking. The rain was still coming down, which was normal from what I heard from people complaining about the weather.
��������The hood of my coat kept the rain out of my face as I pulled the spare tire out of the trunk, I took the jack out and left the truck up. More for people to see and that would keep them from running me over. I jacked up the car and got the tire off without any trouble, having to kneel on the wet pavement to get the jack into the right position. Then I was done, no big chore I thought. So I put the jack and the tire in the trunk and then closed it and walked to the door. I closed it and was taking off my soaked jacket then I heard the sound of tired whirring on the highway, getting closer and closer. I thought I better get in the car before...
��������Next thing I knew I was sitting on a bench. I thought it was a bench. I looked around and I couldn't see where I was. Train station? My eyes couldn't focus on anything, there was a deep fog all around me. I could only see maybe five feet for sure, then the dense fog would be shifting and blurring everything. More if I tried to gaze through it.
��������Then I tried to think of who I was. I sat with my eyes closed and I concentrated and couldn't remember anything. I knew I should be getting frustrated, but something told me that I had the time and it would come to me. I just had to be patient. It was a woman's voice speaking to me, not really speaking, but more of a deep memory. You'll be okay, you just need to be patient.
��������The brightest flash of white light burned through the fog. I saw Sophie trying to sit down without falling down. The light came from her, it shot straight up into the sky and I knew it went on forever. Like it just appeared, it had always been there. It was a beacon trying to call me back home. If I was lost, she made something I could see from wherever I was. I went and sat beside her, I put my arms around her and knew that her beacon was burning through her happiness.
��������I had to hear a police officer giving her the news that I had been in an accident. The police officer knelt in front of Sophie. Doing what she could to comfort her. I felt a sudden burst of outrage when I saw that the god damn officer had tears in her eyes.
��������What the hell gave her the right?
��������She didn't even know why she was crying, it was Sophie's hurt, damn it! Stupid b***h! Aren't you trained to handle this kind of thing?
��������A piece of Sophie seemed to show itself to me and I realized that the officer couldn't help it. If it were any other person, she would be handling this like a professional. Giving a near scripted speech and offering phone numbers and trying to help the grieving. By putting her in touch with family.
��������The officer felt the beacon and immediately felt like home. Her fears for her kids if something happened to her while she was on the job. What would happen to her kids? A range of feelings like that washed over the officer and she did all she could to bare it. The other police officer was standing on the lawn with his cap pulled low over his eyes, I could hear him sniffing.
��������For their sake, I did all I could to help Sophie.
��������That beacon burned itself out and I'd be back at the waiting place. My memories flowing past like smoke. Then the beacon would flare again. I watched my funeral. I walked among the people there, doing what I could to comfort them. Reliving all their memories of me. My parents, my sisters, my friends, all of them needing that little bit. What was great was Sophie, she was there making sure they were all okay. She seemed to be following me, giving little words of comfort. She even made my parents laugh. She held my sisters in her arms until they were back under control.
��������The beacon flared up again and I found myself with Sophie at Christmas holidays. She watched all the movies we liked watching at that time of year. She spent more time at places helping people down on their luck, making up for my absence it seemed like it. I knelt by our bed and held her hand. She stared through my eyes, exactly where my eyes were, staring at the wall. She tried to keep her eyes open, but finally they closed. I laid behind her until she was deep asleep and found myself at the waiting place.
��������It kept going like that, I'd see that she needed me and I'd be there. Each time, I'd seems to forget a little more. She wasn't stealing all my memories, I was giving them to her so she could go on. Time changed, or it was the same and I just couldn't tell any more. Everything just kept getting more and more disconnected. Sophie began to share my memories with kids that I didn't know. The kids would be laughing and laughing and I'd be happy that I'd be a part of that. It got to be so I'd feel like I'm drift out of the waiting place and all I'd have to do is walk by and caress her hand. Letting her know that everything was okay.
��������One last time, the beacon flared as bright as it ever did. I found myself standing in a small dark room. The only light from a light that was attached to a hospital bed. I had my hands wrapped around my back and I walked slowly closer. Listening to a beeping. Trying to see if there was anyone else around besides me and the person in the bed. She was awake and looking around, didn't seem at all surprised to see where she was.
��������There was a little smile on the little old lady's face. It grew when she saw me. I wasn't sure, but I thought I knew this person. The oxygen tube had slid off her ear and dangled at a funny angle. I reached and put it back over her ear. She nodded a slow thank you. I asked her if it hurt, she slowly shook her head. She told me she was just old now. Old and tired and needing a really good rest. Her voice was just above a whisper.
��������I knew this person. My mind just couldn't pull up the memories. I asked her if it was alright if I stayed for a little while. She nodded and smiled. I wanted to stay with her because she felt like home. She felt like when all is right with the world. She looked into my eyes and I took her hand in both of mine and just stood there. Her eyes telling me that everything is alright, just be patient and it'll come back.
��������"Grandma?"
��������She looked over at the door. I turned and saw that there was a woman standing there. She was holding a bouquet of flowers in her hands and I smiled when I saw that she had home made mittens hanging from her sleeves. It must have been cold out. The little old lady looked back up and me and I told her that I should go. She closed her eyes and gave the slightest of nods. I told her that everything was okay and left.


��������I sit and look at the bench I'm sitting on. I think I may be at a bus stop. Or maybe it's a small waiting room. When I look around to see, it's blurred and shifting, dense fog surrounds me and it does no good to look around. So, I look at the chair, it's actually a bench. The kind with wooden slats screwed to a steel frame. I remember a bench like this from somewhere, maybe by that convenience store that I used to hang out at when I was a kid.
��������I hear soft peddling footsteps coming towards me from the right. Along a sidewalk? Is it a sidewalk? I know it's cement, maybe I am waiting for a bus or I'm just sitting waiting for... Sophie?
��������"Jon?" A tired voice cracks, it creaks out an old woman's laugh.
��������"Yes?" I look, a form is pushing its way through the blurred fog.
��������The elderly lady is a little squatted and hunched. I peg her age to be in the 80s. She sits beside me on the bench and she hauls her bag up on her lap and takes the handle in both hands. She's so much a caricature of a little old lady that she makes me smile. Long dress, kerchief around her neck, thick wool sweater, and a big pair of glasses. She looks over the top of them at me and starts to laugh that creaking laugh again.
��������"How long have you been waiting?"
��������"I don't," I look down and I can't remember a whole lot,"I can't remember much."
��������"Oh, come on now." The old lady's voice even sounds like a plateful of warm cookies. The kind that makes you smile.
��������I look over and see her eyes peering at me. I stare and stare, then memories start flooding back. They're coming straight from her. All my life, all of hers, we start becoming who we were.
��������"There you go."
��������The person I was, comes back in sections, building me back up. Sophie was a memory that tipped all my life back into me.
��������"Sophie?" I leaned and looked deeper into her eyes.
��������Years rolled off her faces, all the different people she had to become without me. She remarried, buried another husband, grew old grandmothering her step-kids' children. They all knew what I knew. That Sophie was very special. Everybody that got to know her, got to see themselves in the best possible light. The way they were meant to be seen, the way they were meant to live their lives. All those people she touched with the kindest heart, they all knew that they were given better lives by this woman. Now she was giving me back all my memories and sharing hers, the things I missed.
��������"So, this is the way you remember me, huh?" Sophie was looking like the young woman I had left. She held up her arm and a pink mitten dangled from a string that came from her sleeve.
��������"Yes." I reached over and took her hand.
��������"You know, I think we can go now." Sophie took my hand and stood up.
��������We left, we went further.

The end.

Author's Note

My notes fer fixin' it: Always fixin the fiction. And I'm already getting distracted by my dumb little word games that go on in my head.

And if you reached all the way down here and read this. A while back, I read one thing that stuck to my mind. Murder your children. It was someone explaining how to edit stuff you wrote, I read it somewhere a long time ago. I decided I'd make myself a list of stuff I'm going to change before I changed it. Which might be a while before I really edit the hell out of the story. Guess I'll add... gah... what's her name? Cappi! Sorry, I'm really bad with names. But Cappi is the man. I'll fight that fact with anyone. I'm writing this after her review because I uploaded this story and just left it as is. I meant to go through it and fix stuff.

Just so you know, this might turn out longer than the story itself. Which came out all in one sitting. I didn't slap the keyboard and it just appeared, I didn't sit here writhing, wishing I could go to the washroom, I did those things, I mean I started writing it and didn't stop writing until I wrote the end. "The End" I mean. I don't know how to do this really, just add onto what Cappi thought.

Who are these characters? Well, it's really husband and wife. He died, she doesn't like it that he did. She better not, because he left her with a truck load of cash. See? That's the kind of thing I left out, because it would take away from the core of it. I dunno what I'm talking about. It just wouldn't look good if she was wiping her eyes with hundred dollar bills.

I need to set the fact that she's in mourning. Still, and that it has been a while, but we can't tell how long. It might have been a week or it might have been a year. Could it be as simple as adding...

I watch her, my wife.

I'll try it.

Okay, on we go.
She can go days and laugh on some of those days. Days and days. She laughs on some days and other days. Did I mention days enough? I'm not sure.
I need to stick something in there about how she calls back the dude. It just goes straight from 'i wait until she calls me back and she needs me' to how her memories come back. I'll stick an in between in there.

I want to clear up how her memories makes her happy, but those memories make her really sad. If you know what that's like, which I hope you do. That's just a terrible thing to say. I hope you had painful times in your life so you can understand my writing a little better. It's okay to laugh while you're reading my notes here, I just don't want to start putting 'lol's everywhere.

By the time people area reading the next paragraph, 'between the place...' I want people to somehow know that the dude is dead and he's trying to comfort her.

Relive? is that right? Re-live? re... experience? But he's reliving it. Like playing a video game and you play it again and go through the same area twice. Relive. I'll have to look that one up.

I sure do hope that the last three sentences there clear up as people read.

Blue like a smurf. They aren't all the same shades of blue. I'll have to fix that.

Do people understand what I mean when I say 'mittens'? I imagine this old Donald Duck cartoon back in the day. Where Huey Dewey and Louie build a snowman and Donald is a friggin asshole and goes to knock it down. Anyway, the nephews are where these big bag looking things with thumbs attached to them on their hands. Mittens. You know, mittens! I like the word 'mittens'.

Dad actually built a coat rack like that. He still has it at their place. In the winter, it's this big... mound of coats and toques and scarves and everything. I'm talking about a "Thing" like on Addams Family, but it's made out of all these winter clothes.

Decorations of wool. She piles on big balls of wool. Vicariously balanced. Bump it and there's a kittens dream avalanche. Balls of wool rolling all over the place. Mittens and scarves I mean, that's the decorations of wool.

She take. Bag the ones up. That last sentence needs to be fixed.
Geez, we're only in a few paragraphs and look at all the stuff I gotta fix.

The ragged man was wearing it on his head. Maybe I should leave that alone because where else would he be wearing his mittens? Mittens! Something about that sentence bugs me, I'll fiddle with it.

Why did I meantion that he wasn't smiling? I read it out loud and it reads better without 'He wasn't smiling, but". No, if I do that, the next part gets all too felty and feely and purpose-y. Before I sit here and try to fix it in my head, I best move along.

Trying to catch him up. Sophie pulled me along. Yeah, that would be better, you guys already know she's trying to catch up ragged man.

Should I change that 'tugged on the man's dirty jacket'? When you're running up to a stranger to tell him something and you tug on his jacket... jacket... jacket... mittens!... you usally tug on his sleeve. If you guys don't say anything about it, I'm not changing it.

Even when I wrote that part, 'turned and cringed a little', it didn't feel right. Sounds right when I read it out loud, but looks weird. I write how I talk... and I talk funny.
Forthcoming attack. Maybe the dude talks like that, i don't know. I'm leaving it in and I'll argue that it should be there if anybody thinks I should change it.
Tongue tied on 'He looked to be just hitting his'.
Capital B 'but'. I don't mind that so much, but it doesn't have to be there if I tighten up that little part.

Sophie looked down at her bemitted hand? Too many hands. Too early for a bit her mitten and 'tugged' it off?

Man, look at all the hands! It's like the cover of that one KISS album. Fire hands. Fire some of those hands!

I took 'these' because it had a string on it. I know I should fix it so that the ragged man took those so he wouldn't lose them because of the string, but maybe the ragged man talks like that. I don't want to fix how he talks. Some people talk funny. Like I do.

See? He said ma'am.

He straightened his back (throwing back a noble brow, chin thrust out, ragged man placed his hard working fists on his hips and exclaimed to the listening crowd...) Okay smart ass, just take out that 'that look said' and leave it at that.

Sophie threw herself at him and threw his arms around his neck and threw him to the ground and threw some more things.
Buzz, your girldfriend..."WOOF!"
He penised his head at me... hehehe
I watch too much TV and movies. Anyways! You guys let me get out of control and I'll go all night making pop culture references.

he just turned and walked up the street, Of course we watched him. Don't think that needs to be there.

End of the memory sequence, we're back listening to the dude. I need to add a little thing in there maybe. Or maybe the 2 hard returns and the space is enough. What I wanted to do was make that entire ragged man thing a big indent, which worked pretty good with another story I wrote. I'll try it if writerscafe editing thingy supports it.

A little bit of tears reads... weird. Maybe weird works. I'll try some other things, but maybe he says little bit of tears since he says stuff like 'forthcoming attack'.

How. Missing a how in there.

I'm saying on that part, that Sophie's 'caring' is nearly a physical thing, her bread crumbs of a sort that actually makes the world a better place. I hope you people know someone like Sophie, always happy and they're just good people.

She doesn't realize that it's not really ONLY the ragged man walking up the street that made me so happy (that day?). It's her, she always made me feel so lucky. Reads a little better. if you have a better suggestion, lemme know.

She ripped off her own head and it was cradled in her arms. I took her head from her loving arms and whispered in her ear... her ear fell off and hit the floor with a tiny bloody smack. Oops. I walked over and hucked her head in the garbage. I went back and got down on my hands and knees and whispered in her ear that everything is okay. Sophie agreed with me by falling off her chair and hitting the floor, she farted and I left the room laughing.
Okay, I gotta fix that 'cradled' thing.

At the beginning... this part is the start of another memory sequence. I hope that indent thing works because I don't want to add anything that say that the dude is remembering her remembering. This is confusing. Imagine what it's like for the dude.

Hang on, I think I reused a phrase. Nope. But I see a couple things there that hang. 'She couldn't only be'. What the hell was I tryignt o say there? I can't remember now.

I can see by the time I'm reaching this part, I had settled into really writing this thing becuase it reads a little better.
Just a little.

I don't know why I wrote that 'on a business trip' to 'i got a flat tire' sentence that way I did. I'll fix that. 'It wasn't dark' Doesn't need to be there.

The tire blew, I mean that thing sucked. Nobody liked it in the first place and it should be that the tire popped. Or 'the tire blew out'. The candles. Or something.

Man that's a long weird sentence. So many things to fix. 'there was a rest stop ahead' and all that.

'people complained about the weather enough'. I'll try to see what that looks like without the compaining part.

truck = trunk

people = other drivers coming along at 6000 kilometers an hr. That's right, kilometers. I'm Canadian so there. I'm not going to put that in the story though, just need to fix that 'people' bit.

No big chore putting that jack under there, I was done, the jack would scrape along the highway until I could bring it to somewhere they could fix it. Maybe I should mention something about putting the spare tire on the car?

'I heard the sound of tired'... it sounded like a yawn. A giant yawned and swang his club like a 9 iron and smacked me into an ethereal plane of existence. 'I'm dead!' I screamed! 'Oh my god!' I picked up my sheet and chains and began moaning and clanking my way to Sophie's side. I'd haunt her until the day she died.
Yeah, sometimes I find it hard to stay on one subject for long and it's little things like 'tired' instead of 'tires' that'll distract me.

Okay, I better hurry on because it's getting a little late.

'more if I tried to gaze through it' I gotta change that or get rid of it.

That entire next paragraph I should take out all the periods and commas and replace them with 'and'. I might try shifting a few of those sentences around.

Like dude, it just appeared. Like, a pillar or something. Like, you know? Like, dude! Hey, I wrote a thing about a guy who says... dude? I think it was dude. And the other guy is trying to get him to find a new word. But the other guy says 'fuck' a lot. It's just a little scene with no beginning or end. I'll upload it just to see if people actually read it. I think I might have uploaded it before and then everything disappeared.

This entire police officer bit needs to be fixed... somehow. It'll be a major change / fix i can get it right. major elements to keep... The cop and how she feels how Sophie affects her. The other cop trying to keep himself together.
What i really want is for readers to know is that the cop talking to Sophie is a woman. Police woman. They should know... there's 3 real people and the dude is mostly watching. In my mind, this is all taking place on a porch with eavesdrops... there's plants hanging all along. It's dark and only Sophie and the police woman are lit. You can see the orange light from the streetlights... there's a cement walkway leading down to the sidewalk, from the steps, the walkway is sided by grass. The grass on either side (and I know I said I wouldn't do this, but it's all coming back and I got to get it down since I didn't write it the first time, I'm just seeing it again now) of the walkway is clean cut, the way the dude kept it. In the dum light you can see the cop car. The police man stands in the grass to the left of the cement walkway, he's standing with his right shoulder toward where the police woman is kneeling in front of Sophie. His head is pointing down the street, but he's not looking at the houses or anything, he's gazing at the sky because... Sophie is making him remember things that really mean something. Maybe he's remembering... suggestions? His son learnign to skate. Or maybe his son learning to play catch with his first baseball glove. Or something, he has a kid and he wants to go home right then because of how Sophie affects him.

we can skip ahead to... lemme find something i wanna fix.

'She spent more time at places helping people' that one reads weird. The laid thing is somehow not right. I'll fix it.
'I'd seems'

Okay, you guys probably don't know, but between...lemme see... 'more and more disconnected' time slipped for the dude and the next time he remembers seeing Sophie, she's talking to her step-children about the dude. She got remarried by then you see? But the dude is giving his memories to Sophie so she can get along in her life. Man, there is so much to fix when I'm explaining how it's supposed to go in my notes here.

'It got to be so I'd feel like I'm drift'. The dude is named Drift?

Okay, here we go on to Sophie's death bed sequence. The only light from a light?
The dude was holding a package behind him using his stumps. That's how his hands were wrapped around his back.
She wasn't awake, she woke up and looked around. She must have been dreaming about the dude or something and that's how she called him. It'll be a precedent that she could call him from her dreams I guess. I'll just leave out, throughout the story before, that sometime's he'd get called to her and they'd be building a go-cart with their landlord. I'll just leave it like that, she called the dude with a dream, and it was the first time... artistic license and all that.

'I knew this person. My mind just couldn't pull up the memories.' (They were all used now)? Would that sound better that it is? I'll try it.

"Grandma?" is a voice from the doorway behind the dude. There is looks like the dude is calling Sophie grandma. In my language, this would be 'kye7e?' but only a rare few would read this and know what it meant. So, 'grandma' it is and I need to think of something to let readers know who's talking. It's one of her grandkids. From her step-kids' kids.
BTW, readers don't need to know this, because it's not a part of the story, but Sophie can't have kids. I don't know why, but it didn't present itself to me, it's just an interesting fact of her background. Never know, one day I'll write a story about who Sophie really is why she has this amazing effect on people and their entire lives.

Massive sentense there, with the boquet of flowers. I want to put in something about them being simple flowers too. Maybe they're home grown or something. Yeah, seems like Sophie's grandkids would be the kind that do stuff like that.
Oh hell... msn... keeps beeping at me.
I was just going to say that... she wears mittens and grows flowers in the same season? If people want to argue the logic of that... artistic license! Maybe her grandkid drives a flying car too. Or teleported just outside the hospital room. It's cold on the moon and she needs mittens, but it's summer where she works on Earth so she's growing flowers there. Commutes to earth everyday by teleportation devices. If people can't let that one little thing go, then they shouldn't read anything more complicated than the McDonald's menu.
Okay, I better start wrapping this up because I'm getting grumpy. lol
Damn it... there's 1 'lol', it'll be the only one.

Okay, here we go with the end part. I repeat some stuff because I figure it adds to the fact that the dude has lost track of all time because he gave all his memories to Sophie. Did it work? To me it does, it's nice, I like it that way.

If he has no more memories, why does he remember the bench from a store? Well, that part stays in, but I'll shift that sentense down as a way to show that he's getting his memory back. Should work out too, people might figure that his memories are coming back chronologically so he remmebers the bench from when he was a kid. i'll leave that part up to the reader.

'I peg her age' that's me talking and not the dude. I'll change that. 80's looks weird, numbers do when they're just put in late.

I just put that work 'caricature' in there because I didn't want to sit here for hours trying to think of the right word. I'll look up a different one that might fit better. Might not find any because... well, I see Sophie in this little part as a true caricture.

But one big ass thing I see. The dude should ot be remembering who she is, she's just this old lady who showed up. Wait, no it's right, he doesn't know. Yeah never mind. My notes here are making my story different in my head already.

There's a big red squiggly line below 'grandmothering'.... it bugs me. I mean exactly what i said... grandmothering. Does that even make sense? To me it does, but then, like I said... I talk funny. I'll have to look up some better way to say it. Maybe I'll just leave it, I don't know yet.

'Now she was giving me back all my memories and more.' something like that, I'll have to fix that.

I can probably add a 'young woman I had left (when I died.)' in there. Not like it's a big secret. What with the being at the fural and all.

I'll fix that reaching up and took her hand bit since the next part says something about taking the dudes hand.

I'm not changing that last time. I held that one in my head for a long time.
Further where? I don't know. That's the way it's supposed to be.

The End.
Of my notes.

PS: If it seemed like I'm treating this story as if it were a joke, I... I have to, it's the only way I can edit it. It was actually heartfelt as I wrote it because I lost people in my life and I do wonder where they went. Sure, I know how they died and everything, but... what's after that? I sure do hope it's something, and I hope I meet them when I'm gone and I hope they look the same as how I remember them AND I hope they give me back who I was. I hope.

PSS: I hope this fits in the notes section. Would be kind of silly to give a notes section then limit it. Some people make a lot of mistakes. So, keep in mind, if you want to suggest some fixin's, that I already see all these little things wrong with it and redundancy doesn't help.

PSSS: Mittens!

Reviews

[Ama May Cooper]

Right ive deiced to read thru all you notes and tell you what i think of your ideas but while doign thati thougt of one more point.
This is a short story not a book, the story in itself has fhinshed by the end of the chapter, mabye you mean to carry it on but this seems like a very abrupt ending, like there i snothing left to say altho i fyou do edit it with qute as much as you have above mabye you can weave a whole book out of it but this seems very much like an ending. sorry im rambling.
As you hit the very end,where you discover he is male is here. "Jon?" A tired voice cracks, it creaks out an old woman's laugh. Perhaps that can be edited in earlier altho saying that the main reason i think of mother is you have portrayed her as rather innocent little child kinda description and the main character seems to be older all the way thru espically teh way she chews the mittens unsure of what to say, and the way the older man says look after that one , to me that suggests she will grow into bigger things, also the pulling him along like children do. But sayiing that it simbilies a sweet beauty abou tthis woman that is a critical part of ths piece, so im not sure what to recommend.
I dont think the money is nesssacry part of your tale, tbh this is showing her griefing her emotional struggle and her evenutal freedom from that pain, the money isnt mentioned but i think thats almost because it dosent need to be, as the story itself isnt about how the man tred to make things comfy without him, its about how she coped and what unfolded of the way they intereacted after he was lost.
Yes actually such a simple edit of adding i watch her . my wife would clear up most of the confusion over you main character giving the reader a firm idea n there head of who we are indeed listning to.
You have portrayed that he is dead perfectly by that point .
No jacket fits perfectly , espically now im aware that where talking about an older woman, you only tug on sleeves as little children because they cannot reach much higher. I think the jacket is a nessacrly part of the story.
"Of course we watched him" Perhaps drop the of course.
I have to say the police man scene needs alot of editing, not because its bad its a wonderful scene but just because you depict her very much like a child, the way the policemen are almost mornng for her age rather than the scence the mentioning of th efamily and caring for children, its almost as if she is no more than 12 hearing of her mother/farthers end.
You have described a beautiful scene ther ein your notes, a scence that would depict the emotion beautifully the orange lights and the darkness all around, you shud add that in its wonderful.
There is no mention of this kid, i was unaware he had a son, might want to add that in somewhere.
Yeah when it mentions talkign to peopel he didnt no i was thinking, new skl friends as she got older, teachers, and then adult friends this idea that she is a young child sorta etched into my brain until your very last paragraph.
I think its not he has no more memories, more that the memories connecting him to her are distanced now and because she uses his connection so little now, he has almost forgetten the times, because he is after all floating in an empty space watching things unfold, we cant be sure it hasnt been many years since he last saw infact yes we can , it seems that time ticks endlessly and what is a day on our planet must seem like eternity for them, and as the connection broadens between the people mabye the memories fade. But once she dies and joins him they are connected once again so it sort of makes sense for him to rembeer her again.

[Norma M Sutton]

"If he has no more memories, why does he remember the bench from a store? Well, that part stays in, but I'll shift that sentense down as a way to show that he's getting his memory back. Should work out too, people might figure that his memories are coming back chronologically so he remmebers the bench from when he was a kid. i'll leave that part up to the reader." I think possibly he remember the bench because it was before Sophie? The memories he gave here were their memories together? So possibly some ancient memories of small parts of his life were still there? I had a aunt with . . . altimers(sp), Parkinson's, something they never were really sure of, but her short term and recent memory were what disappeared first. The old memories from here childhood were still there. Possibly it would be the same here.

[Ama May Cooper]

This is beautiful in so many ways, suh a sweet soft truth altho i have to admit i thought your main character was the young girls mother until the very end thats the only unclear bit i have noticedd otherwise a tremendos story and i loved it