"We Are Not Alone"

she had grown more accustomed to this woman’s vulgar language and obscene gestures. It was different for their daughter though. After a month or slightly more of witnessing the bizarre behavior of the stricken patients at the nursing home facility, she remorsefully reduced her visits to her beloved father to a trickle, trying desperately to remember him as he was. Sara understood. By four-thirty she made sure that she was on her way before the traffic added to her long ride home and prior to that witching hour, when notoriously severe Alzheimer’s patients would display their most heart wrenching outbursts and hallucinations.
“Hap-hap-hap-happy days are here again . . . again and again and again and again,” an older male patient belched out poetically, a farewell gift that Sara could have done without. She made up her mind six months ago that when the door to the building shut behind her, there she would leave her most heart breaking feelings. Sara knew that Jack would want it no other way! He was a very strong willed individual, hard on the outside and just as determined within.
Sara didn’t have to be told by her husband’s doctor that he only had a few weeks left. She recognized the signs along with her own hypnotic numbness that swallowed her up, day after day. There was something important that she had to do for the love of her life, before he left this world. She already made up her mind that next week she would bring Jack home to die. But first and foremost, she would drive him up the spiraling road of Mount Haleakala in Maui. His work had taken them to Maui many years ago and his passion of staring at the stars and the breathtaking nebulae through one of the largest mirrored telescopes in the world was what brought him the most joy. Here the plethora of