A Memory From the ShadowLand

He loved it when he woke up before everyone else. This was his favorite time of the day. The world is still mostly asleep, the house quiet and peaceful.

He was so lucky. His path in life had not been easy, but the rewards had been worth it. As a competitive athlete, he often had to sacrifice for his sport. He did very well in school, so he did not fall behind when he missed so much class time. One of his friends joked that he missed 90 percent of the classes and still got 80 percent in the course. Missing school was not for leisure though. He was either practicing, or on the road to a competition, or in a competition. He had lots of friends in school, who on occasion wanted to skip class. He didn’t have that luxury, but he did have the car. They would skip class but still had to wait for him to drive them to whatever place they felt was better than where they were.

For a short while, in university, he had to give up diving. Although school had come easy to him up to this point, some of the classes in Engineering were kicking him in the butt.

It didn’t last long. The urge to get back on the boards, to soar through the air would not leave him. So, when he was at a point in his school where he felt comfortable again, he began to get in shape. Up early for a run, healthy eating, and exercise at the gym. Soon he was ready to get back on the boards and continue that journey towards the Olympics.

That summer he had given himself time to enjoy downtime with his friends, before he fully committed to that grueling schedule again. The summer passed in a slow, leisurely way. Party with friends, trips with his family, and lots of downtime to enjoy life. August of that year he took a trip with family to Newfoundland, one of his favourite places.

He loved Newfoundland. He had been there many times, but each time was as special as the last. He spent a week in Newfoundland with family and then came back early to attend a festival with friends. It was going to be his last festival before the training started again.

Funny, after that point things were hazy in his memory. The intervening years seem foggy at best. The memories of the Olympics feel more like a movie playing in his head. It was like he was watching a story play out- the years to get good again, the travel to Japan and the excitement of competition. In his mind he saw himself standing on the podium, but it felt like looking at a picture, rather than a memory.

Shaking off the reminiscence he turned to the present.

Slowly, so as not to wake his beautiful wife, who was most definitely not a morning person, he slips out of bed to go look in on his pride and joy.

Watching his child slowly wake in the morning is truly one of life’s most perfect gifts.

He picks her up before she can utter a sound, and she snuggles back down on his shoulder, knowing that everything she wants or needs will be provided to her in the next hour.

After making sure she is dry and fed, he puts her back to bed, safe in the knowledge that both his beauties will sleep for another couple of hours.

He slips out of the house, to enjoy the walk to school. A leisurely walk-through town, as quiet as the house he had left. It gave him the time to go over his plan for the school day. Making it to the Olympics would always be a point of pride, but nothing compared to teaching. The joy when a concept was grasped was a reward hard to put into words. There were no medals for this.

Growing up his Mum had always nudged him towards teaching. Going his own way, he set his sights on a university degree in bio-medical engineering. Somewhere, in the middle of getting his degree, he had come around to her way of thinking. He wanted to teach.

Again, there was that weird juxtaposition in his brain. He knew he was a teacher, but the path to get here was fuzzy. He could picture a campus, but that was it. He couldn’t quite remember much else about getting his teaching degree. He saw himself standing on the stage, degree in hand, but it was flat- two dimensional. There didn’t seem to be much substance to the memory. Again, he shook off the memories and looked to the day ahead.

He walked into his classroom, glancing around with a sense of pride. It always made him feel funny to see his Olympic medals and the display the students had made for him. They loved that it was there, so he accepted their adoration.

 He was looking forward to another day here, molding the hearts and minds of his students. It was exactly as he knew it would be.

He sent his good morning text to his mum. No matter how many years passed, he felt blessed to be able to do that. He would see her this weekend. He had been the “apple of her eye” but he knew that he now took second place to his sweet baby girl, and he was okay with that.

As he settled into work, he heard a bell begin to toll, and he looked up at the clock. It wasn’t the school bell. The sound was too distant, too deep to be the school bell. This was something different. It was far away, but so loud.

Panic began to take hold. The sound of the bell was pulling him, pulling him out of this reality. Like every morning, the fog lifts and he remembers- the last festival, the lost weekend. He hadn’t come back. He had died at that festival. This was not life. This wasn’t real.

 He tried to hold on but everything around him was losing cohesion. As the bell tolled on, the world, his classroom, was all becoming hazy. Sadness settled. As this reality faded, he accepted the loss. This was not life but a memory from the shadow land. It was a future not meant to be...