The Spirit of Cassy

Jason met Cassy in their junior year in college. He was going to change the business world and set it on its ear with his brilliant insight and steadfastness and she was headed into the world of education of our youth by becoming a secondary teacher of English. Both were ambitious but naïve and both of their desires proved to be wrong. It was part of the mush that one learns in our colleges today and they didn’t realize it until they got out into the real world.

But that first meeting between the two of them was something special that changed their young lives forever, for during that eventful event, a bond developed between them that eventually led them down the road into matrimony. They were married out of convenience to hide the fact that they were pregnant before they entered their senior year and Charlie was born before they graduated.

Charlene, not Charles, was a premie; born a good five weeks early to a C-section, and was a little bit of a thing throughout her entire life. But she had the energy and good looks of her mother and the sensitivity and caring of her father as she grew into adolescence, so by the time she reached 12, she was a well adjusted pre-teenager with a caring demeanor hidden in an unbelievable body of good looks and bubbling personality.

As for her parents, their lives took them in a different direction from what they started out to be. Jason did start his own business but in the trades field by becoming a licensed contractor and a home builder. He had framed all through his college years so when he graduated, he had a family to feed so he stuck with the thing that he knew and eventually started his own business.

Cassy, decided after two years as a classroom teacher that she wanted to do other things rather than babysit oversexed teenagers so after much soul searching, she became an editor for a local publishing company and learned that not only was she good at it but she really loved her job. It took the best of her two worlds and combined them into a perfect scenario for which she thrived off of.

They grew as a family as most young families do, starting off in a rented apartment, then upward into a rented house and finally into a house that they and the bank owned. They filled it will furniture, first ratty, then nicer and most important, they filled it with the love for each other beyond belief. They would play and laugh and sing their way through the years of growing until that fateful day when Cassy found a lump in her right breast.

For two years the three of them fought it with all of the might. The surgeons cut into her three times, she tolerated the Chemo Therapy for just over two years and the Radiation cost her the little dignity that she had left, but just over two years after they diagnosed her with cancer, Cassy passed away and the family went into a grief that only those who have suffered such a loss can ever imagine.

Charlie was 12 when she was diagnosed and 14 went she passed; right at the age when girls need their mothers most. Charlie had none and although Jason tried, he could not fill the void left behind by Cassy’s passing. No one could and Charlie was left to suffer.

It was no “cake walk” for Jason either because his soul mate, his lover and his wife was taken from him at a much too early time in his life. He was only 35 when she left him with their daughter and with his business thriving, it didn’t leave a great deal of time for him to be a nurturing father and mother all rolled into one. Again, Charlie was left to suffer and there was nothing that he could do about it.

Their once happy little family turned into a complete dysfunctional one in a matter of two short years as each of them continued to grieve in their own way; Charlie by searching for the affection that she craved and Jason by burying himself in his work. It had to come to a head before it was too late and it finally did one Saturday afternoon.

This particular Saturday was like no other because it just so happened to mark the four year anniversary of when they got Cassy’s diagnosis. It had been building up in Jason for almost a week and when that day finally arrived, it hit him pretty hard. He told himself that it was just another day and it was no big deal but he could not feel anything but total remorse when it got there. He found himself completely distraught and by the mid afternoon on that day, he was in his bedroom sobbing his eyes out longing for his beautiful Cassy.

All of his grief, all of his pent up remorse came gushing out of his eyes in a torrent of sobs and tears. The greater he vocalized his loss the more he needed to let it out. He was wailing very loudly behind his locked door as he buried his head in his hands. There had to be an end somewhere to his emotional release but it was nowhere close so his tears continued to flow.

Charlie heard him from the family room as he started his ordeal but as it turned into an out crying of all of his emotional turmoil that he had kept inside of him, the escalating volume forced her into checking it out for the well being of her father. She crept down the hall and listened in at his bedroom door as he continued to wail his grief louder than she had ever heard it before and wondered what she could do to sooth him out of this nightmare.

She decided that she should respond so she gently knocked at his door and said in a low voice, “Daddy, are you alright?”

She heard his cough and sniff and then he blew his nose and answered, “Ah yeah Charlie, I’m just, I’m just, ah,…” and then he opened the door to his confused daughter.

“Oh Charlie, I just miss your mother so much and, well, today it just got the better of me that’s all. I’m sorry you had to hear me breakdown like that but, well, today was the day that we found out your Mommy had cancer and it was the beginning of the end for her and me, and you too Baby. I know that I haven’t been much of a father to you these last couple of years but I just couldn’t be. You needed me to be a good Daddy and a good Mommy and I wasn’t either. I’m so sorry Baby,” he blurted out and started his tears all over again.

Charlie joined him on the bed and fell into his arms and started to release her own emotions. She cried on his shoulder and he sobbed into hers as they once again began to wail away at their sorrow. They stayed like that for the longest time with Jason stroking her back and Charlie rubbing her daddy’s back.

Charlie broke the silence with a question that she had wanted the answer to for a long, long time. It was a question that she thought she knew the answer to but decided that this was a good time to confirm it. “Daddy, we used to have so much fun every Saturday morning watching cartoons in your and Mommy’s bed. I would bring the Cheerios in with me when I came in and the three of us would joke and have so much fun just watching the TV. Then when Mommy got sick, we stopped having all of that fun. We stopped having any fun at all. I know how sick Mommy got and all but we stopped having any fun doing anything. Was it because you were sad back then also and how long will it be before we can start having fun again?”

He lifted his head from her shoulder to look his daughter in the eye. He studied her soul deeply through the windows that were open to him and what he saw turned his heart to mush and his mind to thinking about the last couple of years. Of how he had shut her out of his grieving and his life and how ashamed it made him feel. “Soon Charlie,” he said with a smile on his face. “Real soon.”

That was the start of a healing time for Jason at least, and a time of discovery for Charlie. It was a bazaar chain of events that led them to a whole new world of fun and adventure, while at the same time, taking them into the unknown element of spiritualism. It was a time that would change both of them forever.

After thinking on Charlie’s question for the better part of a week, on Friday night, Jason informed his daughter that he thought that the next morning would be a fun morning to rekindle some old habits and start having fun again.

“Tomorrow, we start up the tradition of watching cartoons in my bed again so bring the Cheerios and your pillow because I’m taking the whole day off,” Jason announced just before bed time and it was met with a laugh and a promise to be there right on time. Charlie was so excited about this time with her Daddy once again that she could hardly sleep after hearing the news.

“We’re starting to become a family again,” she thought. “Just me and Daddy, watching cartoons on a Saturday morning.”

That next morning, Jason awoke to the sound of rustling in the kitchen and he knew that his daughter was getting the Cheerios ready for their breakfast feast so he hustled into the bathroom to empty his bladder and jump back under the covers just in time for Charlie to make her appearance carrying the box full of Cheerios and her pillow. She came bounding into the room wearing her tee shirt for pajamas and her long bare legs sticking out of it. She plopped herself down on the bed next to her Daddy and sat right up on her pillow for support.

“Turn on the Cartoon Channel Daddy,” she said with her gleeful voice.

Jason flicked on the remote and tuned it in to the channel as Charlie pulled out a fist full of Cheerios and stuffed them into her mouth. She was munching away when Jason said with a twinkle in his eye, “Hey, don’t be such a hog, save some for your ol’ man.” She smiled and handed his the box and they shared their breakfast as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

When she had had her fill of the dry cereal breakfast, she repositioned herself out of the sheets with her head facing the TV and lying on her front with her head resting on her hands and elbows. She was watching the cartons intently as she wiggled her hips in an attempt to get comfortable. In so doing, she managed to expose her little panty covered butt to the world and didn’t even realize it.

Jason soon took note of it and marveled at how much his little girl had grown up. He had never noticed that she had developed a nice curvaceous behind that he was just now looking at but he must have known that she had grown some hair down there also.