The Parasol

Charles sat in his garden alone beneath a parasol.

He'd been alone since his beloved wife Martha had passed away six months earlier. 

They'd been married for nearly 70 years. Charles was 96.

Grief stricken, inconsolable and bereft, the old widower could not face the world without Martha.

"Where are you Martha my dear? In the clouds? In Heaven? Where?"

He sat in his old deck chair completely oblivious to the weather.

Having been sunny that morning, a strong wind was kicking up and increasing rapidly.

Charles didn't notice the trees around him bending and swaying like maddened kelp.

His gloom was total. A coat of tears.

Suddenly the parasol, which had been shielding him from the sun, blew off its stand in a gust of wind. 

It careened around the garden, tumbling and spinning until it stopped dead.

A second gust hurled it towards Charles.

It struck him in the abdomen and the steel shaft went straight through his body.

He was impaled, facing the open canvas.

It looked to him like a giant flower emerging from his gut.

His blood began to flow down the metal and drip off the end he couldn't see sticking out of the back of the deck chair.

"Martha, I've been umbrella'd!"

A further massive wind lifted the parasol, Charles and his chair clean off the ground. 

They were rising into the air.

Charles looked down.

He could see a trail of red pattering to the lawn below and felt the deck chair loosening.

It fell away like a fuel tank and he rose quicker.

The storm took the hapless widower higher and higher, beyond the pylons and eventually beyond the clouds.

A lonely crow flew below the pole and a single drop of blood landed on its head.

It alighted on the shaft.

Charles thought of Calvary.

Powered by love, grief and blood, he gripped the metal tighter and felt the last gasp of the zephyrs push him beyond the turquoise of the world and upwards into the celestial void.

Like a satellite of devotion Charles entered space.

He nodded as the crow flew off and staring at the widths of eternity all around, he whispered,

"Martha, I'm coming home."