Prompt: Write something emotional. It can be angst or fluff—or even something that makes you angry—but write something that strikes a chord and makes us feel.

Word Count: 1,507

They say that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes.

The whole thing sounds very fast-paced, like some sort of exhilarating action movie my great-nephew would show me. And maybe that's what it's like, when you're younger. You're out with a few friends and you're lagging behind, for one reason or another, so you run across the street to catch up to your friends and forget to look both ways. There's a truck barrelling towards you, and you're powerless to stop yourself, and in that moment there's screaming and cars are honking and you see your whole life in front of you, and then you're hitting the gravel and there's a splitting pain in your knee and you're gone.

But when you're old like me, and you've been dying for months already, your life doesn't flash before your eyes. It's all there, for me at least, but it takes a little digging. It doesn't come up unprompted.

Memories are funny like that. Sometimes you're searching for one for years—you can feel it tugging at the edge of your consciousness, like an itch you can't quite reach—and then a trigger pops up and it's flooding your mind like it was always there. Sometimes it's the opposite: a memory you know that you know (the words to a song you've always loved? the name of a childhood best friend you fell out of touch with a while back?) snagging on the edge of a precipice somewhere and refusing to come as requested. The second one is scarier, I think. You're afraid it's gone forever.

So I've been sifting through my memories, in this time. It's not the only thing I've been doing; my brother and his whole family have come to visit me multiple times, sniffing and hugging me and telling me that they love me. I love them too, but it's hard to talk now, so I hope I told them that enough before. I know how hard it is being the one left behind. Also, there's one nurse who tells stories. They're short, and inconsequential—little anecdotes, humorous tales—but it fills me with a strange, unexpected joy every time I hear them. I don't think she quite realizes how much it means to me to have this semblance of everyday life, of human interaction outside of my family.

I miss Barb, when the nurse tells her stories. I miss her so much it feels like my heart is going to split open in my chest.

When I'm not listening, or being loved, or missing Barb, I'm remembering. It's a little project of mine, now, something I wish I did back when my voice was good enough that someone could have recorded these for me. But most of these memories are only half-alive since Barb died, and when I go the other half will come with me. I've made peace with that, I think. There are still people like the storytelling nurse, so the sentiment will live on, even if the facts don't.

My memory starts with blurry childhood days. I've talked about them with my brother since we lived them; for most, we can never agree on what happened. Like the time we went to the beach in the winter—our reasons for having gone are long irretrievable—and we dared one another to go swimming in the horrible cold. I jumped into the water and began shivering almost immediately, but he stayed frozen, fear keeping him stuck right to the frigid, pebbly shore. I laughed at him all the way home, I know I did, and he just stood there and glowered at me.

But my brother remembers it differently. According to my brother, we both jumped into the water together, though the cold drew us out almost immediately. We laughed hysterically through chattering teeth on the car ride home, a blanket over both of us, and our mother fed us hot tea and apple cake.

I know with absolute certainty that Ed never touched that water. I know it like I know my own name. Listening to him talk, though, you'd be sure it happened the way he said it. It's ridiculous how he does that, uncanny and uncomfortable. When someone doubts you like that, sometimes you almost believe them, and then you think you're going crazy. Brothers are aggravating like that, I suppose.

Which leads me, in a quite unchronological way, to thinking about Barb. She wasn't like Ed. Barb always remembered things the way I remembered them. It was just one of the many reasons we always felt like two separate manifestations of the same entity, like two pieces that so obviously fit together in those puzzles she loved.

It was raining on the day I met Barb, and I'd forgotten my umbrella. I must've looked funny, racing through the street, shaking rainwater off of myself like a wet puppy. Barb had been jogging through the downpour (she always loved jogging, don't ask me why) but she stopped when she saw me. She didn't stop to laugh. She stopped to go inside of a store and buy me a new umbrella.

It was white satin with a black cover, and little ridges all around it. I wish I could say I still have it, but it's been lost over the years, probably deemed (accurately) as old and rather useless, and thrown away.

I thanked her profusely, and she waved it off as nothing. We exchanged names, and set to talking, and somewhere along the way realized we lived a few blocks away from one another. So months passed, and we met up more and more often. And one day—it was rainy then, too, I think—she took me to her apartment and kissed me.

Everything after that was a blur.

I remember when we told Ed, while his wife was tucking the kids in. He looked between us for a long moment, and then he hugged me tight and told me I'd always be his big sister.

I remember moving in with her, that first apartment with the flowered wallpaper that always smelled like dust and the vanilla extract Barb used as perfume back then.

I remember us watching my niece and nephew grow up and how they called us Aunt Barb and Aunt Pattie and hugged our legs when we gave them peppermints.

I remember when our niece, all grown up now, got married. Happy as Barb and I were for her we also envied her, dreaming of the day we could have our own wedding.

I remember when that day came, and although we were old and Barb was already sick we planned it at once. If I were to live for another million years and not just the few allotted to me I would cherish that memory for all of them. Being Barb's bride was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I remember after that, as Barb deteriorated. I remember kissing her and being afraid it was for the lats time, my heart breaking when I knew it really was.

And now I'm here, only a short time later. Soon, Barb will really be gone—Ed will remember her, and his wife, but they won't live forever. And my niece, nephew, and great-nephew, I suppose, but I don't think she'll be someone they think about every day. Just every once in a while, probably, a brief memory of Aunt Barb and Aunt Pattie before they float back into the rest of their lives.

But soon I'll be with her, or I'll be nothing, and either way it doesn't matter who remembers who. I'm only a shell, now, anyhow. Barb was my lifeblood, and since she died, I've become two-dimensional. On paper, I'm lying here in the hospital, but inside? I don't know where I am. I'm somewhere else, I think.

And there you go. I suppose that was my life flashing before my eyes, in a strange discombobulated way; a random order of events floating through my brain. Trust children to glorify it. And I'm sure I could dig deeper, now. I could remember a thousand other moments, so vividly it feels like I'm living them.

But the storytelling nurse has come by, and she's started to speak, so I don't think I'll remember right now. A whole lifetime is exhausting to reflect on; the memories can wait, and if I never do get to them, they've already been lived once. I want to take a break, now. I want to hear about a different person's life, a life that feels strange and faraway to me but everyday to her. I think that's what I want to be doing right now.

I don't want this story to have made you sad. Or if you absolutely have to, don't feel sad for me. In all of this, I'm almost half-happy; dreaming about Barb is almost like she's here. Feel sad for the people I leave behind, who think of me every once in a while.

Until I see you again.