Indecisive Dreaming

Long Since Lost

Today was their one year anniversary. One year of her, alone, with Rosie. The first time she would sit by the gravestone, her daughter at her side.

Rosie wouldn't understand, of course. She was too young, only two, and she probably didn't even remember life with him. Not the way she did.

That first and only year as a family before the car crash- she smiled at fond memories. Her, him, and Rosie, all together in the park. She would sit on the mossy picnic bench, watching him crouch down to her level and show her again and again how to throw the ball. Rosie would grin, snatch the ball from his hands, and trot across the grass. She would press the ball into her mother's hands, and look up at her with smiling eyes, willing her to keep it safe. Sitting on the bench, she would lean down and cup the tiny hands inside her own.

But those days were over now. Now, there was only her to look out for Rosie, to keep her safe, to keep her loved. The other opportunities were lost to her now, gone with him. When he left, her other part went with him. Now, it was difficult, certainly- economic downturn, working three jobs to support both herself and a toddler. She'd moved into the run-down apartment her parents occasionally rented out, where cracks on the ceiling dripped into buckets and spiders crawled across her face at night.

Hope was long since lost to her. Laura sighed and stood up from the same park bench she'd come to every day since his death, the same one where Rosie had pressed the ball into her hands and smiled. She watched her daughter in the autumn leaves- clothes threadbare, the soles of her yellow boots worn through. Rosie was playing aeroplane among the falling curtain of red and yellow, zooming this way and that. It was a hard thing to do, pull such a hapy child from play, especially to visit her husband, and with him her other half. She tried to remember- there were never actually two of them. The other never truly began, just a figment of her imagination.

"Come on, Rosie," she called across the empty park, "Time to go."

Rosie's face dropped, but she came nonetheless.

"Where are we going, Mummy?" she asked, looking up with wide blue eyes as she held onto her mother's finger. The pair, one big, one small, walked under the iron gates that framed the entrance.

Laura drove her free hand as far down into the pocket of her coat as she could, shivering. "We're going to see your daddy," she replied, only just holding herself together, "all together. Not just me today."

"Okay." Rosie trotted along the slick pavement, trailing her hand along the sodden leaves caught in the fence.

They turned the corner, into the cemetery. She'd certainly chosen an appropriate day to visit- everything was limp and grey, caught between rainstorms when dark clouds crowded the sky overhead and a fine drizzle sent chills creeping into her bones.

The path was a winding one, stretching deep into the evergreen forest. Strange choice- all of their dead, silent and waiting, resting among the trees that lived forever, never casting off their leaves to become skeletons of their former selves.

As they neared the spot, the setting became more familiar. There, a weathered grey stone, with the name A. Radford hardly visible, and beside him, the more recent grave of Mary, his beloved wife.

Rosie gripped her hand more tightly as they passed the final bend in the path. In front of them, a simple stone cross was engraved with the final reminder of him. Laura's stomach twisted into uncomfortable knots, and her vision became blurry as her eyes filled with unspilt tears.

Here lies Michael Lutes, buried beside his only son, Gabriel.

Laura knelt down beside the grave whilst her daughter watched silently, ignoring the damp ground, and placed the wilted flowers by the headstone. As her lips touched the cold stone, she murmured something heard only by those long passed: I love you. I love you forever.

Rosie left that day understanding something of her mother she never had before. Tears that never fall are the hardest to wipe away.