Today’s post, The Volunteer, is based on a writing prompt I shared last week in the Daily Drafts & Dialogues Writers group. Hopefully, it helps spur your creativity today too.
Writing Prompt: The Volunteer
Write about a person who is volunteering. Consider: What are they volunteering to do? Why? And who are they helping?
The Volunteer by K.E. Creighton
Nurses keep coming into my room every few minutes to keep me “comfortable,” as if not having enough fluffy pillows will make me change my mind and persuade me to keep my kidney after all. There’s not enough down feathers here, so screw them! Is that what they think I’d say? They also just can’t fathom why I would volunteer to donate an organ to a complete stranger without wanting compensation of some sort. But I maintain that I don’t even want a short thank you note, thank you very much. And they keep asking if I want to know the recipient of the organ being removed from my body. I don’t. That’s not how this works.
Last year, my wife died from a rare kidney disease. We had nearly a year together after she was diagnosed. And she, the love of my life, was a terrible patient. She was always cranky and refused assistance, hating that she always needed help and was losing her independence. But she was also a deeply compassionate person who always saw the bigger picture and cared for others on grand levels. And always put my interests before her own. Even on her death bed. Even when it made me resentful. Because I made a vow to always love her more than anyone had ever loved another person before. And even she wouldn’t stop me from keeping it, I always joked. That’s how I know who she really was. Because of who she was when she was at her worst, right up until the very end. She refused to be a burden, for me to remember her that way. Who cares if she’d curse when she needed help eating or going down the stairs? Or if she sometimes snored in her sleep?
On her death bed, she relayed her final will and testament and made me promise, in writing, to let her go when it was time, when she felt it was time, when she grew tired from being on dialysis too long. When it affected me too much, according to her intuition. And she made me promise, in writing, to love again, but to keep her memory alive. To keep our love alive. Because the world needs more memories of a love like ours in it to keep it spinning, she said.
While I know she probably didn’t have this in mind, not exactly, this is how I choose to remember her, what she brought into this world, and what she made come alive for me. The post-surgery scar on my body will bring me closer to her in more ways than one. And will keep us close. Always.
All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton and Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. All names and locations referred to are the product of the author’s imagination and are used entirely for fictional purposes. Any similarities to real-life persons or places are purely coincidental.
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