writing doodle - Gabe's wife's backstory ... needs editing

"That has got to be the ugliest tattoo I've seen in quite a while, and my step son has some horrific things on his arms ..."

Gabe rubbed the scraggly Christmas tree with only three ornaments and a blanket around the base that had long ago been inked over his heart.  

"You should have it covered over," his companion said.

"Nope."  

Never. It was never going to happen.  He drew his knees up, clasped his arms around them, and lowered his face. Sure he'd covered over the tattoo of his second wife's name on his bicep, now it was an ugly tribal tattoo, but at least you couldn't read XXX on it anymore.  The one on his chest would stay like it was as a memorial of Suzanna Schmidt, the stories about a little girl that taught him how to live with his heart wide open.    A little girl he had never met and never would.

According to his uncle, the primary storyteller, a Charlie Brown Christmas was the most influential television special in Suzanna Schmidt's life.  Because of the love given to a scraggly tree, what people saw was a beautiful creation of nature.  It was never the fullest tree, the fanciest, or even the most symmetrical, but it was the most loved.  So from the time she was six or seven, she loved all things lopsided, poorly painted, neglected, or out of date.

When they were kids, you might say that Suzanna's life embodied the spirit of a Charlie Brown Christmas.  As she grew, she saved her pennies to buy partially completed craft projects at garage sales, because someone had loved it enough to start it, she could love it enough to finish it.  Many times the projects turned out a little tattered or uneven, but she completed them and loved them all the more.


She sought out kids at school who ate lunch alone, smiled and waved to everyone when she rode her bike.  After high school, she volunteered all of her spare time at an animal shelter.  Cleaning up the messes in the cages was not as much fun as working on obedience with the new arrivals, but she always did the necessary.  Always.

The stories ended abruptly when she was twelve eighteen/twenty-one/pick a number any number.  Depending on the teller, the ending changed.  She died in a bicycle accident delivering flowers to a nursing home.  She was beaten to death by bullies who had harmed a younger child at school.  She got on a school bus; no one saw her get off and she wasn't there at the bus yard.  No one ever saw her again and she became small town legend.

It was a high standard; putting others first.  Leading with the heart.  Doing what was right.

He'd heard the stories from the time he was five until he was a pre-teen. Later he heard the stories being told to his nieces and nephews.  But now the stories were more grandiose, more important, somehow more significant.

When Gabe was seventeen, one of his sister's friends had been invited to the prom by Tom Kennedy, the biggest jerk in the school.  He asked six other girls from other schools to go, knowing all of them would accept and he would be able to choose the prettiest one.  Sarah wasn't pretty but she was smart, funny, and nice, geeky around the edges, but nice.  When he found out that Tom had asked Lacy Ravenscroft as a joke, he tried to get her to agree to go with him.  He couldn't convince her; instead, he waited around the night of the prom and when her date didn't come, it took him two hours to convince her to go bowling with him.

Five years later, when he married ABC (or same as above - who knows), it was a small wedding in a bowling alley. In lieu of presents, they asked money be given to 123 charity instead.  They had their lives ahead of them, that was all the celebration they needed.

Who would have believed that same disease would kill her six months after they wed?