Kaila Fergon (18)
The Light That Shines When Things End
I don’t wear the necklace anymore. I still have a scar on my hand from when I smashed it against the wall.
They give us the lights as soon as we’re born. They’ve been doing it for decades now. We wear the bulbs around our necks every day for as long as we live. The glass is tough, designed to withstand the usual bumps and drops. It can still shatter though.
I would know.
No one knows how they made it, or how they could possibly know something as unknowable as the future. But they’re always right. The lights never lie.
People call them angels, the ones who gave us the lights. Wonderful creatures who floated down to us and gave us all the answers. They swept away our fear. Our doubt. Our uncertainty. There is no more grief, you see. The lights shine when things end. So we’ll know. So we always see the endings coming.
Who would we be without them.
People look at me strangely now. The only ones who don’t wear their lights are the insane ones. The criminals. The people who are locked away. Surely, anyone who wants to live in the dark is mad. What level of self-destructive do you have to be to risk facing an end you never prepared for? Why would you ever put yourself through that grief?
I get those questions a lot. But they never want to hear an answer. They are too comfortable in their glass worlds.
For many years I asked those same questions. I was so thankful that I was being spared from an infinite amount of heartache. I knew when the boy I thought I would marry was going to break up with me days before he did it. When I was 12 I knew when I was going to see my favorite dog for the last time. After I graduated high school my light would shine with people who I would never see again. There is always a chance to prepare ourselves.
Who would we be without the lights—after we were faced with an end we didn’t see coming? An ending we didn’t want to happen. But we don’t want things anymore. We don’t really hope either. How could we? We already know the answers.
My grandfather is the reason I shattered my light against some brick. The night he died he told me something.
We’re lucky. In older times, the people you loved died without warning. His light had been slowly getting brighter for months. We all knew it meant an ending was coming. His end. But we were prepared for it. On that final night, we had the whole family crammed into a small hospital room with him, getting our last words in. Last laughs. Last stories. He wanted to die at home. But my grandmother insisted he be placed in a hospital. Maybe she still thought there was something the doctors could do. Some medicine that could heal him. Maybe she was one of the only ones who still hoped. But the lights never lie.
I was the last person in the room that night, at his request. We were close. We were always a little different from the rest of them. He shakily removed the light from around his neck, which was almost too bright to look at directly by then. I knew the time was almost up. He held me fiercely with surprising strength and then his arms went slack. I thought I was going to be there as he breathed his last. But it was going to be okay. I knew it was coming. But then he pulled away to look at me, and he whispered something. An idea. The thing that saved me.
“It is the endings that break us, and the words we never got to say and the suddenness and the regret, too. They were right about that. But it is the breaking that teaches us to fight. You’ll never be strong living like this.”
I wanted to ask him a million questions, but he put a finger to his lips and squeezed my hand a final time. His bulb was so bright. I didn’t want to be there when it went dark.
I was a coward. I had never been faced with an ending I wasn’t prepared for.
Just before I closed the door I heard his last words: “Even the light dies each night.”
Two days later I shattered my light, my certainty, against a wall. I gave up knowing. They think I’m crazy. They have for years now. But I feel so sorry for them.
They will live their entire lives without ever learning to fight.
Even the light dies each night. I never stop praying they wonder who they’d be without it.
Kaila Fergon is 18 years old and lives in Palm Springs, California. She spends her days reading far too many books with her dearest chocolate lab, Loki, who is always there to keep her company. She’ll be attending Point Loma Nazarene University in the fall and majoring in Psychology. She’s been tearing through books for as long as she can remember, and early on she knew that she would spend the rest of her life being changed by the way people expressed their feelings through words. That is why, regardless of her future career or her college major, she will undoubtedly always be a writer. The title of this story was inspired by Iain S. Thomas’s piece of the same name.
The Light That Shines When Things End
I don’t wear the necklace anymore. I still have a scar on my hand from when I smashed it against the wall.
They give us the lights as soon as we’re born. They’ve been doing it for decades now. We wear the bulbs around our necks every day for as long as we live. The glass is tough, designed to withstand the usual bumps and drops. It can still shatter though.
I would know.
No one knows how they made it, or how they could possibly know something as unknowable as the future. But they’re always right. The lights never lie.
People call them angels, the ones who gave us the lights. Wonderful creatures who floated down to us and gave us all the answers. They swept away our fear. Our doubt. Our uncertainty. There is no more grief, you see. The lights shine when things end. So we’ll know. So we always see the endings coming.
Who would we be without them.
People look at me strangely now. The only ones who don’t wear their lights are the insane ones. The criminals. The people who are locked away. Surely, anyone who wants to live in the dark is mad. What level of self-destructive do you have to be to risk facing an end you never prepared for? Why would you ever put yourself through that grief?
I get those questions a lot. But they never want to hear an answer. They are too comfortable in their glass worlds.
For many years I asked those same questions. I was so thankful that I was being spared from an infinite amount of heartache. I knew when the boy I thought I would marry was going to break up with me days before he did it. When I was 12 I knew when I was going to see my favorite dog for the last time. After I graduated high school my light would shine with people who I would never see again. There is always a chance to prepare ourselves.
Who would we be without the lights—after we were faced with an end we didn’t see coming? An ending we didn’t want to happen. But we don’t want things anymore. We don’t really hope either. How could we? We already know the answers.
My grandfather is the reason I shattered my light against some brick. The night he died he told me something.
We’re lucky. In older times, the people you loved died without warning. His light had been slowly getting brighter for months. We all knew it meant an ending was coming. His end. But we were prepared for it. On that final night, we had the whole family crammed into a small hospital room with him, getting our last words in. Last laughs. Last stories. He wanted to die at home. But my grandmother insisted he be placed in a hospital. Maybe she still thought there was something the doctors could do. Some medicine that could heal him. Maybe she was one of the only ones who still hoped. But the lights never lie.
I was the last person in the room that night, at his request. We were close. We were always a little different from the rest of them. He shakily removed the light from around his neck, which was almost too bright to look at directly by then. I knew the time was almost up. He held me fiercely with surprising strength and then his arms went slack. I thought I was going to be there as he breathed his last. But it was going to be okay. I knew it was coming. But then he pulled away to look at me, and he whispered something. An idea. The thing that saved me.
“It is the endings that break us, and the words we never got to say and the suddenness and the regret, too. They were right about that. But it is the breaking that teaches us to fight. You’ll never be strong living like this.”
I wanted to ask him a million questions, but he put a finger to his lips and squeezed my hand a final time. His bulb was so bright. I didn’t want to be there when it went dark.
I was a coward. I had never been faced with an ending I wasn’t prepared for.
Just before I closed the door I heard his last words: “Even the light dies each night.”
Two days later I shattered my light, my certainty, against a wall. I gave up knowing. They think I’m crazy. They have for years now. But I feel so sorry for them.
They will live their entire lives without ever learning to fight.
Even the light dies each night. I never stop praying they wonder who they’d be without it.
Kaila Fergon is 18 years old and lives in Palm Springs, California. She spends her days reading far too many books with her dearest chocolate lab, Loki, who is always there to keep her company. She’ll be attending Point Loma Nazarene University in the fall and majoring in Psychology. She’s been tearing through books for as long as she can remember, and early on she knew that she would spend the rest of her life being changed by the way people expressed their feelings through words. That is why, regardless of her future career or her college major, she will undoubtedly always be a writer. The title of this story was inspired by Iain S. Thomas’s piece of the same name.