My Short Stories

Friends just call me Ross · February 21, 2019

(Setting: five years following the vindication of Jehovah's holy name at Armageddon.)

"How Long?"

Hard to believe it's already been five years.

I'm sitting in the midst of Jehovah's congregation and copies of the latest 'new scrolls' are being handed out.

I hesitate to accept the stack of papers that are being passed on to me, fearing my stiff, arthritic fingers will fail me. But the pile is securely gripped and passed on to the person seated beside me, one copy lighter.

'How long?' I silently wonder. How long will it take for me to remember that my fingers are now perfectly nimble again?

I see the size of the print and automatically start to reach for my reading glasses, which had hung, as a permanent fixture from my neck, for over thirty-five years. But my groping fingers can find nothing to grasp. I wince and my cheeks blush with embarrassment.

'How long?' I wearily wonder. How long will it take for me to remember that I have perfect 20/20 vision now and no longer require reading glasses?

The meeting ends and we are asked to stand and sing our closing song.

I start to rise and my entire body tenses in anticipation of the sharp pain that is about to go shooting through my right knee. But the pain doesn't come.

'How long?' I irritatedly ask myself. How long will it take for me to remember that that terrible pain is gone now and that it will never come again?

That is when it dawns on me. It doesn't matter how long it takes to remember...when you have forever to forget.

Friends just call me Ross · February 21, 2019

“You are opening your hand

And satisfying the desire of every living thing.”

--Psalm 145:16

“One Heart’s Desire”

A dog’s joyful ‘yip!’ caught the woman’s attention.

She glanced out her front window.

Cassie was walking her new German Shepherd puppy, Max.

The woman felt a familiar pang of pain in her heart and quickly looked away.

Even though it had been over 333 years since he’d drawn his last breath, she still found herself holding doors open for a few moments to allow him time to follow her into the house.

It still brought a smile to her face every time she turned her garden hose on, recalling how he would beg her to let him play with the spray.

When thunder would ‘clap!’ she still half-expected him to haul all 175 pounds of his quaking body up onto her lap to be comforted. He had been going through the ‘fear stage’ of his puppy-hood when the first rainstorms of spring had hit and was forever after frantic when the ‘boom! boom!’s sounded.

The memories still caused her eyes to sting with tears of profound loss and her heart to ache with a longing to be reunited with her ever-faithful, unconditionally-loving companion.

A ‘scratch’ ing sound on her front door snapped the woman out of her morose reveries.

She sniffled her way over to the wooden portal and pulled it open, fully expecting to find Cassie and Max standing on her front porch.

The woman inhaled a gasped breath and blinked her still watering eyes in disbelief. Surely, they were deceiving her. The ‘Rainbow Bridge’ was just ‘Old World’ wishful thinking. Animals were never meant to live forever, just Jehovah’s humancreation.

Yet, there he stood, looking as happy as a dog could possibly look. When Trooper was happy, he didn’t just wag his tail, his whole body wagged.

“T-T-Trooper?” she somehow managed to stutter and stooped to the happy pooch’s level.

The dog’s warm, wet, growly greeting melted some of the disbelief away. Still…

The now trembling with trepidation woman sat down on her porch, pulled her shoes off and tossed them back over her shoulder into the house. “If you fetch me my shoooooooes, we’ll go for a walk.”

The big dog bounded into her kitchen, returned a moment later with one of her shoes and threw it at her. The woman felt the second retrieved sandal hit her, but didn’t actually see it. She was crying too hard to see anything. Miraculously, it really was her Trooper! She fought back her sobs of joy, hugged her furry friend’s neck and began thanking her loving Heavenly Father.

Trooper was expecting a walk, not a hug, and tried pulling the procrastinating, praying woman from the porch. Hey, a deal’s a deal.

The woman laughed and began re-donning her fetched footwear.

The two old friends would go for that promised walk…and she would pray along the way.

The End

(Just a bit of ‘New World’ wishful thinking. )

Me and Baby Trooper: