The Woman My Grandmother Loved.

Chapter Fifteen

"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
   And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
   Was not spoken of the soul."

Henry W. Longfellow.

One of the memories with Becky that would always stay with Anita was when Anita was only two weeks away from leaving. It was Mid July and Anita was due to return in August. Since the time the envelope had shown up in Becky's life; they had both been aware of how little time they had left with each other and had tried to squeeze in the most that they could. It had been four months since she'd spoken to Jha but she had received and returned a letter from Bhuwan who assured her that all was well. It greatly relieved her for she had been worried that Jha had told him all about it; her brother was a free spirit with very few inhibitions. But she wasn't sure what he thought about love that defied gender norms. Or if he even believed in love for that matter. She hadn't ever tried to find out and she hoped that she wouldn't have to find out anytime soon.

Now as their time together drew closer and closer to an end, Anita and Becky walked along the beach during the evening, the warm summer breeze caressing their skin. They had just attended a wedding of one of the teachers at St. Anne's and that was where they had been all morning. The bride was good friends with Becky and from the few times they had met earlier had become good friends with Anita as well. Watching the bride walk down the aisle had been bittersweet because within their hearts of hearts both Anita and Becky knew that they would do the same. Anita wouldn't walk down the aisle but she would sit in front of the ceremonial fire as her father would give her away. Only it wouldn't be Becky she would be swearing fidelity to for the next seven reincarnations and vice versa.

When the wedding was eventually over; both of them were tired and exhausted from the emotional exertion. They hadn't even decided to visit the beach, much less walk along with it but they found themselves being intuitively drawn to the seashore to watch the waves as they lapped against the shore.

It felt similar to the time that they had been on the cliff only it felt eons ago and removed from the grief that shrouded them. The day on the cliff had been so fresh and inviting, just as they had been. It had been unsullied by the pain of separation; unhurried by the urge they now felt to tell each other everything and say nothing all at once. There was so much to be said and so much to be done at the same time there was nothing to be said and nothing to do but watch as the sands of time kept changing in the hourglass.

Sand would fall and days would pass, as though it were unaffected by their pain. Everything that surrounded them had been beautiful then and it was still beautiful now but it felt cruel. As though nature were mocking them, by displaying the permanence of her beauty while they waned and unlike the moon, never to wax again.

Both Anita and Becky were quiet today and both of them hated the silence. This wasn't the tranquil quietude that they found themselves in at times but the lingering emptiness that stayed long after the other was gone. The kind of silence that hides within your bones and draws you in; as if Pain were an entity separate from you seeking your company in its solitude. Drawing you in, fooling you as if to say, sit here with me my friend for I am sad. And you sit there not knowing that the pain and silence are both parts of you. You sit there because there is nothing to do but feel. And you realize that it is an emptiness that fills you up; the void that feels crowded and the rebukes of loneliness that haunts you more than people ever will.

Holding hands, waves lapping at their feet; the tides getting higher with the moon.

"Everything is just the way it is. But still, it feels as though nothing is the same." Anita finally says, after a while putting to words exactly what both of them were feeling.