Short Stories

Top of the Mountain

I wrote this after my friend lost her brother to cancer....

Life is like a mountain. A really big mountain and all the way up the mountain is a path. Everyone has their own mountain. When you get to the top, your journey has ended. You’re too tired to go back down. The mountain is a path to death, but everyone has one, because everyone knows they’re going to die some day. People don’t like pointing that out though. But what I would of never of guessed, is the mountains have ditches. When you fall into one there is no guarantee that you will get up again.

My story really starts on the third day of high school when I met Lisa and Charity. We became a trio of friends, sure we got other people as friends along the way, but we always stuck together.

We went to houses, met families, and had a lot of fun. It was around the end of term 3 when Lisa told me that her brother was sick. A week later he was taking days off school. A month or two later he was going to hospital. I can’t remember who told me, but next thing I know Lisa’s brother is diagnosed with cancer. A brain tumor! Charity and I didn’t know how to comfort her. When Lisa came to school she was happy and cheery. That’s when I learnt Lisa was probably the strongest person I know. Lifting up a car is good and fine, but real strength is to be able to smile, and that’s what she did, she smiled. We all knew though, she was hurting, bad. I would regularly ask how her brother was, “good” she would always say. I knew he was getting regular radiation treatment. I also knew he was getting worse.

When the second year entered our lives, my grandma who had close sources said that the brother was becoming more weak and more frail.

My parents are divorced, my Dad lives in Gladstone. I will never forget that weekend. We went to a wedding; it was a small one, a really nice, bush wedding. During the reception my Dad’s phone rang. It was Charity. She said the words in such a panicked voice that I will never forget.

“Nick’s dead!”

It was so weird for people to stop existing. Nick had fallen in a ditch. He fell and he fought to get out. I cried a lot that day. Not just for Nick, but for Lisa and her family. For their incredible, heart breaking loss.

Nick had so much more of the mountain to get through. He had to so much to do in his journey up the mountain. He was meant to get to the top of that mountain. Nick isn’t in the ditch anymore. An angel came. Nick’s in heaven, watching over his family, watching his family climb their own mountains. Watching his friends climb their own mountains.

I didn’t know Nick that well, I never will, but I know he’s up there watching our fragile world develop, become stronger and weaker.

But my only question is now, along the way, up my mountain, am I going to fall into a ditch? If so, am I going to get up again?

This story is dedicated to Nicholas.

We all miss you.

See you when we reach the top of our mountains.

People that were involved in the story had their names changed for obvious reasons.