Son Helps His Mother Cope

Dennis awoke to the rattling of his train compartment. They were currently riding over a rough section of railing which had disturbed his slumber enough to wake him. He reached into his coat pocket and removed his cell phone to check the time. He was careful to tilt the phone so that to prevent the illumination from disturbing his cabin mates. He estimated it was sometime early morning due to the palely lit sky. His presumption was confirmed when he scanned the clock on his phone and read 5:23 a.m. He placed his phone back into the pocket from which it came and rubbed his sleep deprived eyes. The uncomfortable conditions in which the train held made sleep nearly impossible. He sat up slightly, as if to surrender to the battle of sleep, and scanned over his companions in the train compartment.

It was a smaller compartment; it seated four comfortably during the daytime, but became an unbearable fit during sleeping hours. Dennis was fortunate though, as he was able to stretch his legs across the booth styled seat located on his side of the compartment. He figured he was given this privilege due to him being the youngest member of the group.

On the opposite side of Dennis sat two traveling partners that had been forced to share the booth styled seat. One was male and the other was a woman. The male was seated as if he was prepared to eat at the dinner table, but was leaning in a direction which left his right shoulder pressed firmly against the morning-cold train window. On his left side sat the woman, who was also leaning towards her right attempting to utilize the male’s body for comfort. Her left arm had instinctively draped itself around the man, as if she was giving him some sort of half-hearted hug. They both apparently had found comfort as they were fixed in a deep slumber, made obvious by their slow relaxed breaths.

Dennis next shifted his eyes down to the female that was stretched out on the floor of the compartment. She had a blanket on top of her, that had been progressively pushed down her body during her deep sleep, so that now it was only covering her from her feet to her abdomen area. She was lying on her back with her hands pleasantly placed atop one another amongst her stomach. Her eyes were shut and her mouth was held open creating a raspy noise each breath in and out she took.

But these three companions of Dennis were not strangers, at least not complete strangers. The male female combination sleeping opposite of him are his brother and sister. The pleasant woman bunking on the floor would be his dear mother. I say not complete strangers simply because they are related through blood and are aware of each other’s existence. But if you placed those facts aside, you would truly get four travelers that were strangers. The Clark family had grown apart over the past years so much that each member had become unfamiliar with one another. If not for an unfortunate event, they may never have come together again.

The reason that this distantly-grown family was now traveling among the same train compartment now was due to their recently deceased father, Allan Clark. Allan was a lifetime explorer in a ways. He always wanted to do new things and travel all across the world. Having children had slowed him down a bit, but he would even take young Dennis along with him on his adventurous journeys. Dennis was easily the closest to his father among his siblings, and possibly even his mother. He knew everything about his dad and thought of him as a best friend and a great role model in his life. His father’s favorite quote was “you only live once.” He would say this to Dennis whenever he had doubts about anything. But it seemed Allan’s adventurous spirit had finally caught up to him. He had fallen rock climbing in France without using any rope. If there was anything good to say, it was that Allan went out the way he wanted to which was living life to the fullest and being adventurous.

But Allan’s unfortunate demise was taking an emotional toll on the entire Clark family except for Dennis. It seemed that Dennis’s close relationship to his father allowed him to understand that his death should not lead to mourning, but rather a joyous celebration of his incredible life. It was partly this as well as Dennis’s strength, both physical and mental, that kept him from being emotional over his father’s death. Allan was the strongest person Dennis knew in his entire life, and learned his own strength from him.

The train began to slow and eventually came to a stop at the Napoli train station in France.