Her eyes were a masterpiece. The corners would crinkle when she laughed as she told her joke. She would tell the same joke every time...by the end I knew it so well I could follow the words out of her mouth...nearly reciting it along with her. We pretended we did not know it for the first ten years...we heard the joke for the first time...every time.
The day the joke did not make its way into daily conversation, we knew something was up. It went quickly from there...day and and day out spent in the hospital. Slowly being suffocated by the white wash room and impeccably sterile walls. The joke left her tongue as the light faded from her masterpiece eyes. Then came the day where, even if she wanted to, she could not gather up enough breath to recite the joke into the sad, dismal room. It was no surprise that one day she did not wake back up.
To this day, I still hear the joke, now, able to recite it with her as it tumbles from my lips into the air hoping that somewhere, wherever that may be, she can hear me and is laughing along with me. A laugh that crinkled the corners of her masterpiece eyes.