Cancer (Their Story.)

Finale - Cancer

Sometimes The End isn't the end. Wynn knew that as she looked down at the fresh earth where her savior was resting. People were walking away to go home and rest after the burial, but Wynn and Taylor just stood there, silent.

"Wynn, do you want to go get something to eat?" Taylor suddenly spoke, startling her from her daydreams. Wynn didn't look away from the damp earth, nibbling a chapped lip as she slowly nodded. Warm hands were placed on her shoulders as her boyfriend lead her away from the graveyard, murmuring things Wynn couldn't hear over her own thoughts, which drowned her in sorrow and feeling of pure loneliness. 

It does get better. Time goes by and the ache in Wynn's chest slowly lifts up and she starts to feel like she can breathe again. Like she can go through another day without collapsing. Sometimes she'll pick up her phone and begin to dial Naomi's number, ready to vent about another day of pregnancy and share pictures of the ultrasound, but then it hit her like a punch to the gut.

Naomi wasn't here to see her baby grow up, she wasn't there to coach Wynn through childbirth, and she wasn't there to witness her grandson take his first steps. She wasn't there for her wedding, and she wasn't there to see her grandson, Ashton Naomi Thompson, go to kindergarten. She wasn't there during Wynn's nightmares, or when Taylor and Wynn hit another rough patch in their marriage. Naomi wasn't there to console her and help her work things out. Wynn reached out to her adopted sister, Lyra, or to her younger adopted brother, Theo, but they weren't like Naomi. Wynn missed her kind words, the sarcasm, how she simply didn't have a "filter." Naomi didn't dance around things. When she wanted to say something, she did it bluntly. She was cold, aloof, but Wynn saw this side to her not even her siblings noticed.

Grief never always goes away. It disappears for a while, but you soon forget they're gone, and once you remember something you used to do with them, it comes back and shatters your world.

One thing Naomi's death taught her that time moves so quickly. One day Wynn was going on bike rides with her son, listening to him blabber on and on about middle school, and then she blinked and he was graduating from high school. Wynn noticed as her son was aging, she was as well. Grey hairs mixed in with her brown hair, her radiant cocoa skin turned ashen and wrinkled, she couldn't move as quickly as she could and it was hard to breathe without strange pain in her chest. Her bones ached, her vision was failing. One day she was going up the stairs and she simply collapsed and broke a hip.

Aging wasn't fun.

Wynn was in the hospital when she got the news. Stage four lung cancer. She only had a month left. She tried to make the best of it, but she was degrading fast and it was hard to stay happy and positive when you're a ticking time bomb. She tried breaking the news to her son with horrible results.

"Son, they say I might not make it to your graduation." He was getting a degree in law. Wynn was so proud of him. His blue eyes filled with tears as she told him what was wrong. Ashton wrapped his arms around her and held her close. An embrace she would get often from family members as they clutched to her like she was going to collapse any minute. In many ways, she was. Her bones began to ache and her doctor told her that cancer has spread to her bones. She was then confined to a bed or wheelchair, unable to move without intense pain.

Life got dark after that. Wynn was forced to stay in a hospital bed, family visits got fewer and fewer, and she didn't blame then. They had lives to live and were too busy to visit their sad, degrading mother. The bad part is leaving Wynn alone with her thoughts and she truly realized the irony of this situation. She had cancer. The very thing she had to pretend to have as a child. Was this retribution for her lies? Had her cancerous lies finally infected her? 

Wynn slowly drowned in her horrible thoughts, and the fluid slowly building up in her lungs. She would live for a while, but she'd feel like she was drowning. A nurse would come in and clean out the fluid, or Taylor would.