Snow Angel

The snow fall was the only thing that prevented him from killing himself that night. The force of the  storm knocked the power lines out, but the darkness wasn’t what stopped him. No, it was because within that darkness, he remembered her.

He remembered how she loved the snow. How she’d pull him outside when the first flakes started to fall. She’d spin around with her arms stretched out, face towards the sky. When the snow was thick enough, she’d fall onto her back and spread her arms and legs out. He’d help her up to preserve the image of the angel she just made.

Sometimes she’d interrupt him from whatever he was doing to drag him out to the only tree that had ever grown in their large yard. From one of the branches, an old wooden swing hung down, and he’d push her back and forth on it for hours. It was her favorite place to be when it snowed.

There were times when he swore he could still hear her laughing. Swore he could feel her fingertips on his skin. He could smell the strawberry lip gloss she used to wear. Strawberry was her favorite.

He remembered.

But he knew she wasn’t really there. She could never be there again. Through forces acting against him, she had been taken away forever, and that old swing didn’t move anymore.

Pulling himself from his thoughts, he threw a log into the fire place and sat in front of it. He would wait till morning. Wait until the memories were deep enough to remind him how empty he was without her. He didn’t know what he had left to live for anymore. It seemed that everything was gone.

He wasn’t aware he drifted off to sleep until he was awoken sometime later by a loud knocking on the front door. The fire had died down long before and the cold air of the empty house chilled his bones. He ignored the sound and started to fall back asleep when the knocking continued again, this time almost frantically. He pushed himself up slowly from his chair, making his way to the noise.

When he opened the door, there was no one there. Nothing but a pure white ground and the early morning blue sky. He looked around in confusion. Who would visit him at this hour?

 Just as he began to close the door, he noticed footprints in the snow, leading away from the house. He quickly slipped on his shoes and took after them.

Almost as if someone knew he’d be following and wanted to toy with him, the footsteps took him all over the property. He found himself growing irritated trying to figure out where the person was going. He wanted to catch them and figure out why they were trespassing around his home, but the footsteps suddenly came to a halt, and he looked up.

They had lead him to the oak tree, and he was all alone.

The swing was clear, as though someone had been sitting there. There were no footsteps leading away from it, but as he approached, he noticed an imprint in the ground. Standing over it, he felt his heart flutter. It was a snow angel--with no handprints or footprints to ruin it, just the way she liked it.

He looked up as a few snow flakes began to fall. A breeze picked up, carrying the faint sound of laughter past him. The swing rocked gently, and he swore that in that moment, he could smell strawberries.

He smiled.

He had helped make that angel perfect when he picked her up from the ground. He had sent her off to Heaven with laughter and love. Now here she was, reminding him that she was never gone. She was there, in the snow. There, on the old wooden swing. There, when the wind blew. There, in his heart. Forever. 

And he would live for her.