Twenty Thousand Days

Dennis Cayden has lived twenty thousand days. That amount comes to fifty-four years and two hundred and eighty-five days, give or take. Dennis was at the end of those days now and lying on his side in a hospital bed, an IV running to one of his arms. He was fully awake and aware, which was becoming rarer and more difficult to be as of late, and he noticed the details of his room with much clarity. Dennis had met his wife Marlene in college when he was a senior and she was a freshman. After her graduation, she became Mrs. Cayden and soon produced two children. The oldest was Dennis Jr., a video game designer living in Texas (thirty and still single, much to his mother’s chagrin), making great money and living the high life. Stacy came a couple of years later and was the apple of her father’s eye as soon as he held her for the first time. Theirs was an average life, yet a bountiful one. Then there was the cancer.