Final Story, Erin Stimmler

Life Audition
By: Erin Stimmler
"There is something about the unknowing and absent idea of being rejected from life itself that would tragically hinge the life’s that we ultimately lead, should anyone find out that there is such a thing as the life audition." Luke and I are sitting in the front room of the house where Sue and I raised our children, where Luke led a seemingly simple childhood, and thoughts of what happened when others passed away were left to be solved by our pastor on Sunday mornings during church. He and his sisters were raised with this patterned belief I suppose because that is what Sue and I had decided was our belief.
We all look at our grandparents, our parents, and any other adults that surround us expecting they will teach us all we need to learn in order to become successful adults. We are taught this behavior from a young age, that people are going to tell us what the world and life are all about.
I sit and stare at Luke’s face with all the certainty that I can muster so that he sees that I am telling the truth, that I am in no way making this up.
"What about those people that ‘die’ mysteriously when they are young. Do you truly believe that these people have died? Do you really think that they were meant to die like people tell you, because, you see, it makes sense when an old person ‘dies’ and people understand it, but when someone has left the world without even making a substantial go at life what then? It’s the audition, they have not passed. Nobody is going to tell you the real truth but me, because they want to go on thinking that there is no such thing. They want to believe that their loved one is not having to start their lives journey all over, that they don’t have to try and take yet another stab at the audition of life, and have the possibility of failing yet again. Its true it’s a scary thing to think about, but that’s why I am telling you, that’s why I want you to know the truth. I believe that you have all the right abilities, and yes I believe that you have not encountered your’s yet. Just don’t miss that opportunity to do the right thing, to make the better choice, because you never know when its just another day, or its an audition"
"You know that sounds really unbelievable right Sir?" Luke was always calling me Sir. It was something he wouldn’t quit and now he was looking at me with a really strange expression, one I had certainly never seen in him before. I wished more than anything that I might be able to read his mind. He was twisting his fingers together in his lap and had been doing so since he sat down to talk with me. "I just don’t know why your telling me this Sir, its just that you sort of sound crazy. I have never heard of any ‘audition’. I just don’t believe there is such a thing."
If he would just call me dad this wouldn’t be such an aggravating conversation I was certain of that, something about the way Sir came out of his mouth sent a bristle up my legs and through my back. That word shot straight through my body and caused pain I thought not possible. If only I could make him understand.
"Listen Son, I am telling you the truth. I can show you what I am talking about, just come with me back here." I stand and lead the way out of the front living room. Ever since Sue, and Charlotte had died I had been spending more and more time compiling information in the office so that the kids would understand. Of all four of the children Luke I figured was who needed to understand this the most. I figured he was the one still facing his audition. The others had struggled with things in life and always seemed to pull through. Whether it was their faith, or maybe their love for one another and their spouses, I was sure that they had completed their transitions in life and I was safe from having to watch one of them give up and start again. I had been struggling with the fact that Charlotte was having to do this which is what had prompted me to develop more with this idea, to be sure it was real. It was, and that is what scarred me, what had kept me from telling anyone. That was until I thought through who had not gone through some kind of an audition, and Luke immediately came to mind.
"Sir, this is absolutely crazy, I am positive that there is nothing you can show me that will in any way convince me that what you have just said is true." I watched Luke standing in the doorway of my small office refusing to even look at my face, following only what my hands were doing as they shuffled through a large stack of papers.
"Here Luke, take a look at this. Then you can tell me what you think about death and auditions of life." I take a deep breath, willing the right words to come to mind.
"What you will find here is the facts, true and real. There is no reason for a child to be lost to the world forever, and I know what you and your siblings all think of afterlife, but what if there is more to it? What if there is something that we are missing and there is some kind of audition? What if there is more of a reason we, even as a Christian society, are aware of other religious believes, like say Buddhism? There is something there that is so Christian, and very much not." I watch as Luke slowly takes the papers from my hands and hope that he is listening to the words that I am saying, and not just letting me talk, taking the papers just to end the conversation.
"Anyway Luke these prove it all and I am not making this up. You will understand once you get on with it, read them." That was all I could do for now, I had to let the research show itself so that he would believe me. There were articles of accidents, Bible Versus. Versus from other religious manuscripts, even magazine articles that I had come to by accident, all together in the folder. Every ounce of information was covered with my handwritten comments, sometimes with highlighted sections of what I thought to be really important and sometimes with just a simple word or two that would trigger my thoughts when I re-read the article.
At first I thought that Luke was just going to stand there and flip through the pages without even looking into what I had discovered. He paused though when he got to the article about the car accident where a mother and three daughters were lost in a fiery accident. I knew exactly the article and what I had written on it. There was the mother, who had lived a full life and when her past was researched she hadn’t really dealt with much in the way of the disturbances that life often deals out. There was a couple outstanding parking tickets, and even a missed traffic school, but that was the worst thing she had in her background. The three kids, all just a year apart in age, were attending the local elementary school. The picture had shown most, if not all of the kids from this school surrounding the street light and block where the family had met their precarious end. Luke I’d hoped would find this particular accident as concrete evidence, especially if he could just see through the black and white of the article. His very own sister and mother had meet such a fate and if he would look, I knew he would see that I was not some looney old father that needed looking after. That just because I had lost my one true love and my youngest daughter, did not mean that I had not done real investigating on this topic. I knew what I was telling him was the truth, that it was real, I just needed Luke to see what I meant.
Charlotte, my youngest of four children, was bouncy and always happy. She never wore a frown for longer than a couple of seconds, even when she was just a baby in need of a feeding. As soon as she saw someone coming with a bottle, or blanket, she was all smiles and giggles. Charlotte had grown to become the splitting image of her mother, her hair was full of red curls, that fell well down to the middle of her back. She had big green eyes, just like her mother, and even her smile was one that filled the whole of her face. She was exactly what I imagined Sue to have been as a child, and perhaps that is the reason that she and I had become so inseparable. Charlotte had come later than the rest of the children, all of whom had started high school by the time she was born. The other three had moved out and were starting and finishing college by the time she entered the first grade. Sue continued working, figuring it unfair to heed special attention simply because of her difference in age. I on the other hand had found it deeply exciting to bestow on her all of my attention. With the other three I had not the opportunity to give them this kind of attention, and I must admit I so enjoyed being able to shower her with any amount of attention necessary to keep that smile on her face at all times.
Sue was the one who picked Charlotte up from school and by the time she had reached the sixth grade it was a ritual that the two had started to stop and get french fries and shakes from the local McDonald’s. On the particular afternoon of the accident I had thought very little of the fact that three fifteen had rolled around without their return back home. It wasn’t unusual for the two to sit and chat, or even stop by one of Charlottes siblings places to drop off some grocery’s or some other little trinket Sue had bought. It wasn’t until the call came from the hospital around four- forty-five that evening telling me that two of my family members had been brought in twenty minutes earlier. It was then I had become aware of the possibility that something was wrong. I had gone through the motions, called all of the children, assured them everything was probably fine, that the hospital attendant would have said something if it were bad. They were all to meet me at receptions desk as soon as they could. Luke I remember had asked if I wanted to ride with him, I had assured him that it was un-necessary, it was a car accident and they were probably just sent to the hospital as a precaution.
The rest of that day now seems to have passed as a blur. I had driven to the hospital with only the smallest of doubt that my sweet wife and smallest child were in any deal of danger. Only that evening, when the doctors had ensured there was nothing else to do, and I had been driven home by my eldest daughter and her husband to an empty home and similarly empty heart, that it all began to sink in. Those days that followed were drenched in sorrow. There was so much time that was left to spend with that sweet little girl, so many memories that needed to be made with the love of my life. Those were the things that swelled in my thoughts, the things that consumed me, there was little comfort that I bestowed upon my three surviving children and of this mistake I was going to have to try and redeem myself.
Thus came the scrambling of the past eight months. I worked endlessly, with no other real appointments in the days, to find out just what happened to my two beloved ones. In my determination I had completely forgotten the things that age does to you, the way that time seems to know no boundaries of speed, and thoughts become things of blurred unintelligence. I am certain now, upon looking back on my behavior, that my three older children must have thought me crazy. There was an age factor that I am certain they thought about. Maybe they even considered dementia, there was a couple of insisted upon doctors visits by my second eldest daughter. Jenny, who followed every "patterned" middle child path while growing up, had insisted on spending the first month after the funeral sleeping at the house and commuting to and from work in my old Rabbit, which I had insisted on keeping because all of our children had learned to drive in it and there was no reason Charlotte could not also have the experience. Jenny had been careful to ask every morning how I was feeling, and if there was anything she could do for me before heading off to work. It wasn’t until the end of the month, when I had to practically force her from the house, that she finally gave up babying me and went back to her apartment in the city, and all that her post graduate school life had to offer. That was when my quest had started. After Jenny had gone, and I was left with my computer in my study to occupy time.
The article that Luke was now re-reading, probably due to the amount of notes I had scribbled around the edges, was one of the first article that I had come across. It was the first article that had produced in me not a feeling of sadness and despair, but a rather rage. Anger had of course initially drowned me in the hospital, however since then I had not been faced with struggling through this specific emotion. I knew that Luke was faced with rage, he was a mommas boy he had always been, at the loss of his mother. He was protected as long as she was around, and always had someone who would cook him a great meal, or fold laundry with, a person that gave him the unspeakable knowledge of someone on his side at all times. This was the type of rage and anger that I had imagined Luke had experienced, and that particular article had taken me three weeks to get past the title without breaking down. It read; ‘Unsuspecting mother and daughters caught in fiery blaze of accident, no survivors.’. Every occasion that this particular article made it to the top of the stack, was another slap in the face about my girls taken away, and another reminder of the anger that my only son must face.