The Letters

The girl was sick and she has been for a long time. People around her knew it, the ones who loved her knew it and she knew it as well. They all understood the imminent future, the unavoidable. Nonetheless, no one talked about it in open. The girl, however was little different from others, she was fond of joking about it. "I really need to fast forward my life, I don't have all day, you know" She used to say very often and that too with a weak smile, because that is all which her sickness permitted.
 
She wasn't always sick, but her sickness has had her for so long, hardly anyone remembered what it was like before. Once in a while, in her smile or the sparkle in her eye, one would get to see the girl that she once was, nothing more.

She used to sing, they said. She had the loveliest of the voice, nothing like the raspy voice which she has now because of coughing for so long.

She used to read, all the love poems. They were her favorites; she liked the melody that she could create by humming those poems in her voice.

She used to write, stories of times long gone by. She liked the charm of the old world. Things were simpler then, she'd say. You fall sick, you die.

She liked listening to stories of the magical world. The stories with angels, demons, gods, goddesses, fairies, witches, she loved them. She believed that fairies do exist. She wasn't so old, you know.

She had the weird habit of making friends with really old people. She had many friends who had seen a decade for her every year. More so, they all treated her like an equal rather than like a grandchild. Though she wasn't old, she wasn't a child, you know.

She believed in all the unbelievable things. Gods, destiny, karma and reincarnation because maybe she needed to. She never had the luxury to start with non-believing and take a U-turn after a few years. She hadn't got all day, you know.

Once she had met a boy at the places where sick people typically meet, a hospital. On one of her not so infrequent trips there. He was on the bed beside her bed. He was sick too and used to come there once in a while. They started talking; actually, she made him talk to her about things she liked to hear about. He was the shy kind, you know.

They were together for a week, and like it happens for sick people, they fell in love too quickly. She liked to hold his hand while talking to him, he liked that too. Their loved ones felt a little awkward, but they pretended that they didn’t notice it and nothing was unusual. Secretly they were happy for them and a little scared too.

The boy was discharged after a week and he had to go back to his home town which was some distance away from her place. They promised each other to write a letter every day.

They wrote letters to each other, every single day. They wrote about their childhood, of the days when they were not sick, of the days when they will get better, about what they could do if they were not sick, of the views from their windows, of the loved ones who were now tired taking care of them and their failed attempts to hide their sadness, of the funny relatives who would come to visit them and ask them silly questions, of the medicine they fake swallowed and spat out later, of the need to be near each other and  of the dreams of holding each other’s hands. They were sure that they couldn’t live without each other.

The letters kept coming and she kept replying. In the morning she will wait for the postman to deliver the letter, and then she will read it a few times. In the afternoon she will think about what to write and in the evening she will write the reply. The postman was one of her old friend, she would hand over her reply to him and take the new letter from him. Her whole life was no longer about her sickness; there was something more important in her life now, the letters.

Though, she was happier and a tad healthier (maybe because of letters, maybe because of love, who knows), she knew that she was getting attached to these letters too much. Her belief in unbelievable things made her believe that days of her life were tied to these letters now. She was going to live till these letters kept coming. She didn’t tell anyone but she hoped that they boy would know and to be sure, she wrote it in one of her letters too.

The letters kept coming and she kept getting better. One day she felt good enough to go on a trip to meet the boy and she went to his town. She reached his house and found his mother. She told her that the boy passed away a month ago, but he has made her promise to keep writing letters. So she kept writing. She told her that he wanted her to get better and live a long life.

The girl was heartbroken and she cried for days.One day, when she woke up in the morning, she smiled and told her loved one that she is going to get better. Later in her life she became a teacher and taught in a university. She wrote a letter to the boy every day, she never posted those letters and kept them in her diary.

 

The End

 

Inspired by:

"The Last Leaf" by O'Henry and Lootera (Movie) by Vikramaditya Motwane

My Sister's Keeper (Movie) based on the Book of the same name by Jodie Picoult