Secrets

Secrets

21 October 1988

18 years old

June—

I came home from the doctor’s office and before I could turn the handle of the front door, it opened and there stood my wife. She looked more radiantly beautiful than usual. As a matter of fact, she looked ecstatic.

“Oh, Jack! Guess what!” she exclaimed as she pulled me through the door. “You’ll never guess what just happened!”

“Honey, I—”

“Jack, we won! We won!”

“Sweetheart, I have to tell you some— Won? Won what?” My suspicion grew in tandem with her excitement.

“We won the lottery!”

“Yes, well, honey… What I have to say isn’t very pleasant.” Then it hit me. “The lottery?” How much? How many people do we have to share it with?”

“$250 million,” she said quietly, “and it’s ours. All ours.”

Weeks have passed since that day in May, three weeks, all told, and I still haven’t broken the news to Sheri about my check-up. My excitement and enjoyment of our newly acquired wealth has been dampened by what I still have to tell her. I just don’t have the heart to do it, which is nothing to say for it five months or so from now. Yes, by then the old ticker will have stopped tocking. Either I’ll be six feet under or gone with the wind, as it were. I haven’t decided, yet.

I have changed my will and signed my Living Will. All I own and all money goes to Sheri, naturally—I have not close living relatives—and I do not wish to be sustained on a life support system. Simple. I have nothing to do but wait. Wait and tell Sheri. Lord help me.

July—

We bought a new house, if you can call it that. It’s a more of a mansion. We live in a plantation home New England, now, it doesn’t matter where. It came complete with rolling property, carriage house, trees, servants’ quarters, original hardwood floors, the works. Everything in it and on it is original. It has been preserved beautifully throughout the years—all one-hundred or so—and nothing from the beauty of it to its property has been detracted from it.

In addition to the house, we also have new cars (one for each of us, a luxury we’ve never been able to indulge before), new clothing, and needless to say, a new circle of friends. Although we only had it for two months, wealth has changed us considerably. We no longer scrimp and save, and I think we are now twice as money-conscious that we ever had been. Not for the extreme lack of it, but for the extreme wealth of it. Before, we were overly conscious that we hardly had any, now we’re delightfully over-conscious that we have more than we know what to do with.

Sheri and I have been trying valiantly to have children and so far, no luck. She can’t understand why suddenly I want to have children so desperately. I think it can go unsaid that I haven’t told her, yet.

November—

Sheri and I have both retired from our demeaning jobs that placed near poverty level in our economically built society. Imagine being retired before the age of thirty-five? The luxury of it is every bit as wonderful as anyone can imagine. It’s a grand experience.

Life has been wonderful to us. Economically speaking, it’s been a learning experience. Both of us had grown up in a stable, middle-class family and gone to college. Soon after marriage, we learned that money was hard to come by once on your own. The minimum wage jobs we had to keep in order to stay in school before we married demanded every ounce of energy to keep our heads above water. We each ended up quitting school in order to survive.

It’s been that way all the years we’ve been married, but if you ask whether I regret any of it, I’d say absolutely not. And I believe Sheri feels the same. Now, without warning, we’ve been thrown into the exclusively rich category. And to put the icing on the cake, Sheri is finally pregnant. Don’t be me wrong, we had a fine time getter her that way. All that spare time, you know, we had to, erm, fill it somehow.

Amidst all the good news, there is yet the bad. I haven’t told Sheri and the time is come. It’s too late now to say anything, so I’ve decided to leave her this journal. It’s explanation enough.

Sheri, I’m sorry, but I hope you’ll understand why I couldn’t bring myself to tell you all this time. I simply didn’t want to take away your happiness. I love you and our child-to-be. In all honesty, I don’t think I could have chosen a better time to die. Or maybe, it’s the other way around; I couldn’t have chosen a better time to win the lottery. All those years you’d condemned me for wasting our money on all those lottery tickets… Didn’t I tell you time and time again that one day we’d win and become millionaires? You won’t doubt my word much in the future, will you, hon?

I’m sorry. That was a horrible joke.

It’s time for me to go, now, Sheri. I just want you to know that although I won’t be with you physically, I will always be with you in heart and spirit. I love you. Both of you. My memory will be kept alive by our child. When you look at him, think of me. Right now, I’ll just lay back and let the darkness wash over me, feeling myself fade away. 

Please don’t cry. Death doesn’t hurt. 

It feels like… 

It feels… 

heavenly.