The Last Leaf

William Sydney Porter, known in American Literature as O. Henry (1862-1910) was a prolific American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of O. Henry's stories. One of his most poignant is "The Last Leaf", the tale of painter who in a heroic gesture, saves the life of a character dying of pneumonia who is sure she will die once the last leaf on a trail of ivy outside the window blows away in the winter wind. Staying up all night the painter renders a leaf on the wall. She lives but the painter himself dies. Outside our home one of our newly planted thirty foot tall oak trees kept its lower branch of leaves all winter. I watched that cluster of leaves like O. Henry's character, hanging onto hope. Monday a week ago as I threw open our outer shutters I saw in horror that this cluster had finally succumbed to a terrible wind storm. It was the day Martijn asked me to feel the lump in his groin. Would that I could paint a last leaf to endure eternity.