[fic] And Then There Was One.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

This is the fic I was talking about the other day.
I cried when I got the idea. I cried when I composed the story. I cried when I typed it in.
And then, I got the feedback from my beta readers and made the necessary changes. I cried then, too.

I wrote this because my friend Rachel misses her grandfather so much.
I wrote this because I miss my wife so much.
I wrote this because everyone seems to be writing letter-fics.

And I hate this story, because it's such a good one.



Title: And Then There Was One.
Genre: Slash
Fandom: M*A*S*H
Pairing: Radar/Wait and see
Setting: Iowa, March 2003.
Rating: U.
Author: Douglas Spencer
Archive: Yes, please. Let me know where.


My Dear Uncle Radar,

I wish there was an easier way to tell you this, but there isn't. My grandfather died at the weekend.

He wasn't in any distress, any pain: they just put him to bed on Saturday night and he didn't wake up on Sunday morning. His funeral will be on the 29th, and he was quite insistent that you should be there. Times and places are in the standard invite which I've enclosed.

I've got to write to about fifty people about this in the next couple of days, and I'm not looking forward to it. I decided that I'd do your letter first, because it'll be the hardest one for me to write.

Here I am, complaining about how hard this is for me, for us, and I can't begin to imagine ... we're only his family, after all. But you? I can't begin to imagine how you'll take the news. I hope you'll be okay.

I wanted to thank you for everything you've done.

In 1988, as you know, he was going through speech therapy exercises. I read him your letter, and he said your name, "Radar", the first complete and intelligible word I'd heard him speak since the stroke. He had a smile on his face, the left-hand side of it at least, and I think I cried. Two weeks later he said his first complete sentence, and it became a sentence he repeated again and again as he was learning to speak again. He must have said your name ten thousand times in the few months which followed. I wrote to you then, explained what had happened, why he wouldn't be coming to the reunion that year. And you wrote back to me, and you wrote to everyone else, and you sorted things out in just the way you always do, and the reunion came to him instead. I remember meeting you for the first time at that reunion, and I remember the way you and I took it in turns to look after him, to interpret for him when the others couldn't understand what he was saying, or trying to say. And I remember seeing you sat quietly alongside him in his wheelchair, holding the hand he couldn't feel any more, and just ... being with him.

I wanted to thank you for that.

In 1999, when he and my mother and I decided between the three of us that he needed more care than we could both provide, we started looking for somewhere he could live. You heard about it, you called in some favours, and -- in just the way you always do -- you sorted it out. The place you found for him was ideal; he loved it there and they took such good care of him. Four years, he lived there, and the Scottish Rite people never sent us a bill. I think that was your doing as well, that their accounts office will be writing to you with the same news. We could never have afforded to do for him what you did.

I wanted to thank you for that.

These last two years, there were only two of you still alive to come to the reunions. This year, he won't be able to come, and this year there's nothing either of us can do to sort it out, no matter how much we try.

I always said that you were responsible for the first sentence he spoke after that first stroke of his. That sentence has become a sort of catchphrase between us since then, every time he drops something, or he's clumsy, or he gets something wrong. He knew he was dying, this last month. He knew he was going to die before he met you again, and he said that sentence again, and this time it wasn't just a catchphrase. Just like the first time I heard him say it, I think he really meant it. On Saturday afternoon, they became the last words he said to me before he died.

"Tell Radar that Igor sends his apologies."

It's the closest he ever came to saying it outright.
And I love you too.

Wendy.

Comments

[scarlatti.livejournal.com]

[Pardon me for butting in here...]

You do have a valid point about the "showing, not telling" aspect of this fic. Now that you've mentioned it, I can appreciate that point of view.

But I guess either I have a natural sentimental bent toward filling in such gaps in my own mind or I've just grown accustomed to doing it. Or both.

This type of short fic often seems to require a lot of under-the-surface, fill-in-the-blanks type of thinking. Not saying that's bad or good; it's just the nature of the beast.

I don't know that this comment makes any sense. But I started it with good intentions. :)

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

This type of short fic often seems to require a lot of under-the-surface, fill-in-the-blanks type of thinking. Not saying that's bad or good; it's just the nature of the beast.

Well, yes. But what's there should be clearly deliniated. In a very short story, you have no room for wasted words - every word should tell the story or convey the image. That isn't what was happening in this letterfic: there's no story to tell, and no image conveyed.