Day: April 10, 2024

MFFFC — The Best Gift

Fandango12 Comments

The best gift is not wrapped in ribbons or bows
It’s not made from precious metals like silver or gold
Nor diamonds that sparkle
Or Rubies red or emeralds green

It’s the warmth of a smile, the touch of a hand
The way you understand, the way you find your way
You are the sunrise after the darkest night
The clearing of clouds after the storm

No price tag is attached
No debt other than time is ever owed
It’s whispered in laughter, shared in tears
A presence that transcends the passing time

There lies a truth, simple and pure
A gift beyond measure more valuable than most
A treasure more precious, a love so true
My dearest friend, the best gift is you

Written for Melissa’s Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Image credit: Dakota Corbin on Unsplash.

Answer Me This — Death With Dignity

Fandango3 Comments

Suze, over at Obsolete Childhood has introduced a new prompt called “Answer Me This.” Suze says it’s “an alternative daily prompt” to the WordPress Daily Prompt, which she characterized as “ones that totally suck and are focused upon the young people here.

Anyway, her prompt question today is this:

Is euthanasia an immoral way to end a life? Please explain your response yea or nay.

It’s immoral, in my opinion, to not permit a terminally ill patient who is suffering a painful, prolonged death to have the opportunity for death with dignity. We euthanize dogs and cats and other animals who are on death’s door so that they don’t have to needlessly suffer. But humans shouldn’t be offered the same option? That’s cruel.

I live in California, which enacted the California End of Life Option Act in June 2016. It allows terminally ill adult residents in the state to access medical aid in dying by self-administering lethal drugs, provided specific circumstances are met. The law allows physicians to prescribe drugs to end the life of a terminally ill patient, often referred to as physician-assisted suicide.

I have a living will. It has a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) provision that instructs that I should not receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) if my heart stops beating. It also encompasses my decision to not have any medical intervention with other critical or life-prolonging steps.

I definitely don’t want to be kept alive by artificial means if either my mind or body no longer function, and I don’t want to burden my family with the cost keeping an empty shell alive.

A2Z Challenge — The Letter I

Fandango25 Comments

I am unofficially participating in this year’s A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is girlfriends.

I is for Irene S.

Irene probably had the best sense of humor of any girl I knew. She was a hoot, and I think she had honed her wit as a defense mechanism because she wasn’t all that pretty. But she was magnetic and drew people to her like no one I ever knew before. I was sure that she could have had a successful future in stand-up comedy.

I tried to get close to her because she really tickled me and she was just so much fun to be around. But she didn’t respond to me the way I had hoped she would. When I finally got up the courage in the 8th grade to tell her how I felt about her, she got this look in her face, almost a look of pity, and told me that she really liked me a lot as a friend, but not in “that” way, meaning the way I liked her.

After that, we were friendly but not close and drifted apart. Before the end of that school year, she moved and I never heard from or of her again. But I used to periodically check to see if there were any stand-up female comics by the name of Irene on the circuit.

Previous 2024 A2Z posts: A B C D E F G H

FOWC with Fandango — Cheery

Fandango13 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “cheery.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.