A Beautiful Day

A golden day, my mother said. She had taken my father (who was dying - in the final stages of metastatic lung cancer, his face swollen and disfigured from the medicines, his once thick head of hair long gone from the radiation, his sure-rootedness now reduced to an uneven, unsure, unbalanced, slow unsteady sort of halting rolling step) to a place in a woods where they could see the tinseled leaves glittering in the sun, Hear them moving in the breeze, Smell the woody, loamy aroma of decomposition underfoot. It was near a river and so water could be seen in the near distance. One of the last good days. A goodbye to the life they had Lived. A golden day. See the sun. Feel it's warmth. Feel the air. Hear the insects, the birds,the crunching of the leaves. Smell the freshness,the marshy fecund scents. See it all. Feel it all. A golden day.