28 Years a Hero

Rewind,please.

December 28th 2015

I stood silently. Everyone had left decades,no hours ago,it was just me. I wanted to go my legs were stiff and I couldn't move but my heart wouldn't let me,grounded to the sleek black coffin,American flag draped over so nicely. It should have been raining it was such a horrid day but it wasn't.

A bright sun beat down cheerfully over lush and proud colorful flowers springing all around the cemetery. It was unfair that I stood there so sullenly on such a beautiful day. Misery loves company,I guess,I thought to myself,emotions gray.

My soul was damp but my cheeks were dry. I was past crying. I had cried for the whole week up to this very day and I feared if I cried anymore I would loose every last bit of water in my body. The grief just turned to pain. A pain that seared from a wound I knew could never heal.

Despite the darkness of the funeral,I wore white the most unorthodox color for such an occasion,standing out like a star against the black sky. But there was a reason for that. It was for him. Kneeling down into freshly mowed grass,that probably was staining the white material green which I didn't even care about.

"Jay?"

I whispered reverently,voice catching. The warm slight breeze ruffled my hair and the grass but still without response. I didn't know what I was expecting or who I was talking to but I decided to give it a try. He would have.

"I know it's only been a week but,I miss you."

I was wrong there was still water enough for reluctant tears left in my eyes and they leaked warm salty droplets that rolled down my cheeks and dripped off my sharp nose.

"And if your there,and Heaven is real...can you see me?"

Warm breeze,rustle and silence.

"God?"

I tried praying for the first time in my life,he always believed that God heard his and now I wanted to try there was nothing else to do. If I had prayed before would he still be alive?

"It's me,Sky,I'm sorry I didn't believe before but I do now. And--and-and..."

I broke down the words choppy

"And I want you to take good care of him okay? He's special and I want you to put him to work because if you let him sit for a moment without doing something he'll lose his mind."

I chuckled through sad tears and sniffed a running nose wiping it with the light sleeve of my dress. Staring at the sleek black coffin that was his home now.

"Jay. I'm sorry."

I apologized and cried even more.

"Please forgive me."

After a few more moments of crying in obnoxiously good weather and waiting for any response, anything , I stood and placed a hand on the flag draped across the black casket.

"I wish...I just wish I could go back. We could rewind to the beginning and I could live it all over again. Because if I knew how short it would be I would cherish every last second." 

A tear darkened a red stripe on the flag as it dropped and soaked into the material and I sobbed.

"I just want to go back."

Whispered slow and quiet,hugging myself full of melancholy I thought I heard his voice in the distance.