This story about love starts with Anna who along with
her younger sister lived the happy life of a 14 year old
teenager.

She was wooed by tales of romance and finding true
love dominated her fascinations. But when she looked
around, she felt very disheartened as her own parents
didn’t seem to be in love with each other at all. This
had happened after a tragic accident that had left her
mother on the wheel chair.

She had started noticing how her father was moving
away from her and spent less and less time with her
now and how he never came forward to help her when
she struggled with house chores or to pick up things
she had dropped, he just didn’t seemed to care.
Anna felt sad for her mother.
She noticed how they no more gave loving smiles to
each other and didn’t even hugged and kissed like they
did before. They did not shopped for expensive gifts for
each other, not even on special occasions like birthdays
and Anniversaries.

They didn’t wear fancy clothes when they went out and
did not even organized flashy dinners and barbeques
like the other parents of her friends.
I don’t think they like spending time with each other,
Anna concluded. She feared that one day, they will
realize how much they detest each other and decide to
separate off finally. She trembled at the thought of
being separated from her sister and having to choose
one of her parents to live with.

She loved both and just wished they would start loving
each other too! She couldn’t even discuss her concerns
with her sister as she didn’t wanted to terrify her by
breaking the horrible news of what she saw coming.
And just like a bad nightmare coming true , one morning
when she got up early to get ready to leave for school,
she found some noises coming from her parents
bedroom. They seemed to be arguing about something.
When she peeped in, she found her mother sobbing
sitting at one end of the bed while her dad was busy
packing his clothes in a suitcase. This is it, Anna
thought to herself. Dad will be leaving us now. She felt
a gush of pain and ran to her room murmuring under
her breath….’why did this had to happen?’

As she stood leaning against the window, absorbed in
her thoughts she saw her dad leave with a suitcase and
walk towards the car.
She rushed to stop him and ran towards the door but
the car had left the house by then. She was
heartbroken. She just stood staring out from the
window for hours not knowing what to do and just as
she turned to go back and talk to her mother, she heard
her dad’s car nearing the driveway.
She ran downstairs as fast as she could and before he
could respond fell in his arms , hugged him tight and
pleaded “never leave us again dad, we love you and we
want to be with you but we want to be with mom too.”
“ And what makes you think I am leaving you guys and
do not love mom “, startled her father asked.
“Well, you never help mom or feel sorry for her struggle,
you don’t even stay at home most of the time and
yesterday you went out with a suitcase packed after
fighting with mom. Don’t lie to me dad, I saw
everything.”

Anna wept more after she had blurted out everything. It
seemed relieving to have voiced all her complaints after
keeping bottled them inside her for so long. “You need
to love Mom more”, she concluded.
“And how do you think I can do that”, asked her father.
Well I don’t know, bring her flowers, gift her an
expensive dress on her birthday, go out with her and so
on”. “ And you think this will make her feel loved”?
‘Why not, it will surely make her feel good’,quipped
Anna. ‘Exactly my point, my little sweetheart, her father
said drawing her close so that she could sit in his lap.
‘All this will only make her feel good but to make her
feel loved I have to get her back to loving herself first
just the way she did before loosing one of her legs.’
‘I do not help her because I do not want her to feel she
is dependent on anyone, I stay out for long work
assignments so that she can devise her own ways of
going about her daily life on her own without anybody’s
help. I do not feel sorry for her because I do not want
to make her feel sorry about herself in any way.

And the reason why I fought and walked out of the
house yesterday was because she asked me to accept a
ship tour that would need me to travel for six months. I
wanted to turn it down because I didn’t wanted to leave
her for so long on her own but she was insisting that I
take it up since it would be good for my career and an
upcoming promotion. People fight a lot sometimes just
because they love eachother so much’, he grinned.
Anna stood shocked , staring at her father trying to
soak all he just said. She felt ashamed to have doubted
her parents who she knew now were the most
wonderful and strong people she ever knew.
“But then why you went out with a suitcase sometime
back”? She asked puzzled. Oh that, those were clothes
and papers I needed to return to a colleague of mine
before they set out on the ship tomorrow morning.”
So you are not going with them, Anna shouted in
delight. ‘Ofcourse not, I cannot d
ream of being away
from you all for so long, I love you all so much’, her
father declared with a smile.

That night as Anna finally went to sleep she knew that
true love wasn’t about gifts, flowers, surprise dinners
and fancy barbeques, it was about over coming
hardships together, helping each other be a better ,
stronger person each day and being there for one
another even when you are apart .
And this was one lesson she knew she would remember
all her life.

Nice one..

so inspiring.

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OP...you called this one 'Short Story' ?