“But I thought she was getting better?” I asked.

Kay responded, “Yeah, the doctor said her cancer has gone into remission.”

“That was three days ago, so why is she back in the hospital now?”

“Some sort of infection.”

That’s pretty much how the conversation went before this morning, when my friend Cheryl Darnell passed away. So, here I sit at my computer, in shock-mode – trying like hell to comprehend what jus’ happened.

Perhaps my shock is an after-effect of sitting by Cheryl’s side for nearly seven-hour after her passing, because I didn’t want her body to be left alone. I did this because her daughter, en route from Alaska missed a connecting flight at Sea-Tac, so she was not able to be at the hospital when her mother took her final breath.

It seems so unfair that less than a month after retiring from the airline industry, she would suddenly become sick with cancer. Cheryl had so much life left in her and had so many plans, including moving to Alaska to be near her daughter and grand-girls as well as to travel around the world.

She was a funny woman, in both her sense of humor and her personality. On one hand, she hated to see any animal suffer but she also wanted to “hurt the shit out” of those people who harmed them.

And her love of animal’s wasn’t only lip-service. For nearly thirty-years Cheryl helped rescue, rehabilitate and re-home hundreds of Nevada desert tortoises and turtles.

As for humor, her favorite phrase was “asshole.” I never met a person who could find so many uses for that single word – and it wasn’t always used in a derogatory manner, because she did jokingly call me that from time to time.

Call me a cad if you wish, but when I visited her in the hospital (she’d already slipped into a coma by then,) I whispered in her ear, “Don’t be an asshole by kicking-the-bucket. Besides you and I have a deal to complete and I don’t want you dying simply to get out of selling me that pistol.”

I added, “I love you, Cheryl.”

Thankfully, her friend Bobby was there when she left us, so she was not alone when she died. Bobby’s also the one who called Kay, who told me. Once Kay and I got to the hospital, Kay remained with Bobby, and I took over, sitting with Cheryl’s body.

A ‘shit-kicking cowgirl at heart,’ all I can do now is imagine Cheryl in Heaven, riding her favorite horse ‘Golden Boy,’ with her husband, Jim by her side. The thought brings a smile to my face, preventing me from crying anymore than I already have today.

And as I said the last time I saw her, “I love you, Cheryl.”

A simple fling; a one night stand, that’s all it was to be, but it turned into much more than that. He wasn’t very happy with himself for screwing around on his wife, but it was too late to worry about that now.

She was dangerous, crazy dangerous, and he knew it, but still he couldn’t find it in his better interest to walk away until it was nearly too late. Shortly after he did end their affair, he realized she was stalking him at work, the store, his gym, and at home.

He felt certain that if push came to shove, he could handle her. And he also promised himself that if the woman even once threatened his wife or their son, he’d kill her, making it look like self-defense and if he couldn’t do that, he’d get rid of the body deep in the nearby forest.

Then one evening, he rushed home after his wife called to tell him that a strange woman had accosted her in their driveway, threatening to cut her throat and stab to death the boy. It took him the entire night to calm his wife, assuring her with the promise that he’d file a police report as soon as he got to work the next morning.

Three days later he called the woman to arranging a rendezvous at their usual place, her condo, telling her, “I really need to see you tonight — I gotta surprise I wanna give you.”  With great anticipation, she readily agree.

Unfortunately for her, his real plan was to choking the life out of her.  He allowed his anger to swell, depending on it to maintain the mindset he needed to complete the violent act he envisioned.

That night, he calmly knocked at her door and she let him in. Without wasting time, he wrapped his hands around her neck, crushing at her windpipe with his thumbs.

She struggled to break loose, but couldn’t. Instead, she drew the lengthy kitchen knife from behind her that she had secreted in the belt of her dress and drove it deep into his stomach and then up into his chest cavity.

His eye’s widened in surprise and his fingers grew weak, slipping as she shoved him backwards against the door he’d entered less than a minute before. As his hands dropped to his sides, he felt his body shudder as he gasped his last breath.

She felt it too and relished the sensation as it came through the knife’s blade and then it’s handle. She smiled, looking steadily into the eyes of her dying lover as slid to the floor, a massive puddle of blood forming around his frame.

She stood over him, looking at his body as it lay limp on the floor, daring it to move, but it didn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t. Finally, and with surprising ease, she filleted his now still chest open.

Having watched enough crime TV, she knew what came next. She retrieved the bolt cutters she has stolen from her now-dead lover’s home and began to ‘crack the sternum,’ exposing his heart and lungs.

“I told you that your heart would be mine, one day,” she said as she sliced the lifeless, but still warm organ from his body, holding it close to her face and looking it over. Her mental task list complete, she turned to her kitchen sink, washing the sticky, metallic smelling blood from her hands. “

“Oh, damn it,” she frowned, realizing she had ruined her favorite dress. But the disappointment was quickly replaces by a smile as she said, “And to think, the dumb-ass never once believed me.”

Next to a house of worship, the local library is a sanctuary that is also under-utilized. In the pre-Internet days, a trip to the library was necessary if you needed to do research.

The row-upon-row of dust-cover clad books offered a silent refuge during many stormy points in my life. Along each wall were thousands of stories, each holding a grain of truth, needing to be explored.

Eventually, I discovered my own story among the shelves, leading me back outside where I’ve crafted tales from my life’s adventures. It’s these adventures that have taught me to color outside the lines.

On the occasion of Abraham Lincoln’s 150th birthday, Carl Sandburg spoke before Congress describing the late president as a man, “who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of a terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.”

When I was a teen, a neighbor lady gave me the 1926 book from which this comes. Love or hate him, Lincoln battled much of his life against depression (melancholia,) but learned to use it as a tool for positive change. It’s all in our attitude.

Poor Thomas’ Almanac for January 25: In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson created the League of Nations. Up till then men settled their differences with wars.

Had Jesus been in seminary with me, He’d have laughed at our ‘purposeful ignorance.’

Once, the class got hung up on God’s meaning of ‘created in Our image,’ – the key word being ‘image.’ Frustratingly, I’d never heard so many differing ideas on the subject before.

(It reminded me of former President Bill Clinton asking what the definition of ‘is’ is.)

After two days, I suggested that anyone not understanding ‘created in Our image,’ should go as a group, find a mirror, look into it, then they’d understand the definition of ‘image.’ Peeving off classmates and professors – it’s what I do.

Poor Thomas’ Almanac for January 24: In 1848, James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento, California, promising wealth for the masses. The state’s been trying to live up to the hype ever since.

“No! Please don’t!”

The brightness of the moon, as it beams through my bare window, is counter to my nocturnal desire to hunt and that is why we are here. The clock on my bedside, screams 1:23 in frighteningly red digital figures.

“Right on time, dear,” I whisper with pleasure. I suck in a long, deep breath from her panties, which I hold in my hand and that are so much more fantasy-provoking than a driver’s license or an earring as they still smell of her sweet pussy juices and ammonia-ridden pee.

Trapped in the corner, against the wall; she has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. She is my winning prize as I cut her gown from her body, throw her to the shag-carpeted floor and wrestle her panties from her waist and legs.

Her pleading does not fail to thicken my cock as I quickly I kick away my blankets, driving them to the floor with my feet. I’ve held off as long as I can, finally I allow my hand to begin the easy, long strokes I enjoy.

The urgency in her screams send a shiver across my skin, raising the tiny hairs all along my naked body. I lock my eyes on her youthful face, her struggle for freedom, making her ample breasts jiggle under me as I press my swollen shaft into her warm, moist and tight, little cunt.

Such squirming is intoxicating and my hard-on nearly explodes as I softly kneed it’s mushroomed head between my fingers. I know I must hold back, or I’ll finish too quickly and will have to begin again.

Meanwhile, she starts digging her french-manicured nails into the fingers wrapped around her compressed airway – and we both know death is close-by. My experience reminds me that there are only a seconds left for me to finish before her struggle ends – the thought excites me even further.

Suddenly, my muscles clench, my body pulses, a scream rises from my throat and then I am lying in my damp, cum smeared sheets. We’ve gone limp simultaneously, me attempting to slow my uneven breathing, her on the floor at her murderer’s feet.

I roll over and gaze longingly at the newspaper clipping with her picture in black and white, and smile knowingly before falling into a peaceful sleep.

She’ll save the world twice more this month from the violence that continually builds in me and yet I know she’ll never be enough. None of them are ever enough and I can hardly wait for the coming new moon.

With age has come aches and pains. It’s easy to look back at one’s childhood and remember when it wasn’t so hard to bend down or climb up on something, not to mention jump off of stuff.

The thought of that activity causes me to cringe because of the pain it would bring. As a child, I spent most of my time outside, barefoot, playing, running through the fields, the woods and creek.

Back then, I was in touch daily with the Earth, but as I’ve grown older the more distant I’ve become. Time to feel our youth once again.

The loss of a parent or parents is a difficulty at any age. The trauma lasts much longer than expected, and reappears at odd moments of any given day — sometimes decades later.

I wish my folks were still around so I could ask questions — something about themselves, to find out if they experienced a certain something I’ve experienced at a certain age, or even how they’re doing.

But most of all I’d simply like to spend more time with them. If you’re a parent, a child or both make time to spend time with your loved ones before they’re gone.