Life is all just a box of pizza.
You have the dough, which is just the beginning.
The dough, is just you as a baby. A little baby with feet the size of big toes, and chubby cheeks and little tufts of hair.
Even though she had never seen it, Mrs Joey Hale could almost picture Logan as a little baby. As the dough, the beginning of the pizza.
Next you have the sauce. The sauce, is the second part. A toddler, so to speak.
A little wobbly toddler, with dribble pouring out of their little mouth, and sleeves covered in snot. It was gross, but adorable. Joey remembered when Renee, her daughter, had been a toddler.
But now, Renee was grown up, working as the manager at Harrison Pizzeria. Despite the fact that Renee was grown up, Joey still thought of her as 'Mommy's Little Brochacho'.
After the sauce is the cheese. The cheese was just a metaphor for what was just before primary school. The cheese was your parents reassuring you that school would be fine, you wouldn't miss mommy or daddy once you got there, it would be fun.
It held your confidence together, like cheese holds a pizza together.
Next you have the toppings. All the little nooks and crannies that those toppings create, are problems and health and sickness and fights or forgiveness and puberty and whatever else was in between. The toppings also represented growing up.
The toppings were going to school.
Making friends.
Losing friends.
Taking tests.
Passing and failing tests.
The toppings were going to high school.
Getting girlfriends and boyfriends.
Partying.
Studying for exams all night.
The toppings were going to college.
Majoring in whatever you wanted.
Taking even more tests.
The toppings were getting a job.
Working.
Adjusting to your new shift.
Trying to get a promotion.
The toppings were finding the one you love.
Having a family.
They were the most important part.
There are eight slices of pizza in a pizza box.
Each slice represents a good ten years.
That's eighty years of life. Everyone deserves at least eighty years.
But Logan only get seventy nine.
Logan deserved far more than eighty, he deserved one hundred and one years.
He deserved as many as he could get.
Logan Hale loved pizza, and he loved working at the pizzeria.
Logan Hale loved Joey, his wife, and he loved Renee, his daughter.
Joey loved Logan.
But all the slices in Logan's pizza box called life where gone.
They were gone too early.
One last good year was left.
Now Logan's pizza box, was just empty. An empty pizza box.
And as Joey and Renee stood over his grave, Joey wrinkled and grey haired of old age, two years after he died of a heart attack, they cried. They cried because Logan was a good man and deserved to live.
Joey cried because she was 81.
She got an extra year.
She wanted to give it to Logan.
She wanted them to die together, in peace.
She wanted to tell him that she loved him too, because Logan's last words had been "I love you Joey Hale".
I'M SORRY.
THAT WAS PAINFUL TO WRITE.
I HOPE YOU LIKED IT.
-LEAH
