VJ’s Weekly Challenge #122: the phone call

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“Do you have time to talk?”
Sweet of her to ask, my 93-year-old mother. Of course I have time.
“What’s up Mom?”
“I’ve been thinking that before I die, I should call Karen. What do you think?”

I draw a blank. “Who is Karen?”
“Reg’s other daughter – she doesn’t know he was her Dad, and well, since I was there, don’t you think it’s right I be the one to tell her. Put her mind at rest.”

It takes me a minute to put the pieces together. Mom and Reg were married and had four children – my half siblings – when things fell apart. Reg left her for Jean – former best friend of my mother – who also had four children. The youngest daughter is Karen.
Karen is now in her late 60’s.

“She was asking a lot of questions when she came to visit that time with your brother. I didn’t feel it was my place to say then – with her parents alive. Now I could give her some peace. I won’t say anything against anyone.”

Caught off guard, I can’t think of one reason why not. To be honest, I am endeared by my mother, who is willing to revisit all that pain for the good of another.

My writing mind appreciates the story here. Oh to be a fly on the wall for that phone call.

**

Let your imagination run wild with this one. One phone call can change the state of things. I know I can easily think of of a number of phone calls in my life: some funny, some tragic, some bursting with promise. Of course, top on anyone’s mind who’s watching the American election: there’s that call from Trump to Biden conceding the race.

Look forward to your responses. To participate, publish a post on your own site and create a link back here. Or leave a comment- those are always welcome too.



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Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

54 thoughts on “VJ’s Weekly Challenge #122: the phone call”

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  4. Oh yes, I’d like to be the fly on the wall when Trump admits defeat! The phone call I remember the most haunts me! My ex-husband called at 5:00am to tell me our granddaughter had passed away just after midnight. She was 34 days old. It was one of the roughest weeks I’ve had in my lifetime. I certainly didn’t want a call from ex, but to hear that news, it was kind of of him to call me since I had already moved to Jacksonville and was 3 1/2 hours away. 🙂 She would have been 11 next month. 🙂

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      1. It’s okay. It was horrible at the time. I did (2) 24″ x 36″ shadow boxes of her for the funeral. I also created the video that played during the viewing and before the funeral. I purged myself in the graphic and creative work for 3 days. We only had a few photos of her because she was just over a month old. I took about 400 photos of her the week she was born. There were only a few outside of that so thank goodness I am the photographer that I am. I was already shooting digital by then so who cares how much card space I used up. 🙂

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      3. The memories were in the stretch of a week. She would have probably had health problems her whole life and she was spared. She is an angel in heaven. Thinking this way is my coping mechanism. 🙂

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  6. The one phone call that will probably echo in my mind for the rest of my life will be the one I received from my elder Uncle back in June 2012, when he informed us about my Nana’s passing in her sleep.
    I was sitting right next to the phone and picked it immediately when it rang. Hearing that news and then letting everyone at my home knows about it still punches me in my heart.

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