Reprise

Sorry, the library had a copy of Fante's "Wait until spring Bandini", and I've been doing more reading than writing.
Everything seems out of balance.
I am trying to pull it all out of a hat folks.
Just a tease...

The doctors worked on him for almost an hour. They struggled with the final decision, but soon after 9:00 pm on a hot and muggy summer evening, Daniel La Fleur became as still as the night air. 45 years old, dead of a heart attack.

The heartfelt despair weight most heavily on Daniel himself, as he hovered in the sterile, sharp white hospital room. All the color washed out, all the pain suddenly disappeared, all the senses, still working. To Daniel, what had just happened was not so much the shock of his own death; but the wonderment of realizing he was watching this drama unfold right before his eyes. He humbly resigned to the fact that this journey was real. “Wow” he quietly whispered to himself. “So this spirit thing, it still works.”

In many ways, the turn of events over the past year led to this obvious conclusion. A sad, bitter, heart broken man, clutching his chest and feeling the pain of a disappearing life as it leaves his mortal body. A family left to pick up the pieces of a shattered life, a fallen anti-hero.  So many things Daniel did not do, so many regrets, such a shame. But now was not the time to try and reconcile a life wasted, what was to become of this little man in this little room? Was he a ghost? Was he not quite gone yet? Was he to forever watch the sorrow of his family as they mourned the passing of a specter right within their reach?

This was not going well. He remembered his last thought as he hit the ground moments earlier. He knew if there indeed was a heaven or a hell, he was doomed to spend eternity in some fiery cave, working on a rock quarry, or shoveling black hot coal endlessly day after day. But to wander the earth as a ghost, helpless to say or do anything, this was clearly the worst kind of hell.