Always With Me

Part One

It's been two long years. The pain still slowly eats my heart away every day. The sleeve of my sweater still drinks in my tears each week. The images will forever be engraved into my memory. Always there, waiting to catch me at my weakest moments. I don't think I will ever be able to escape that day to ever forget it. I don't think I want to forget it though, as horrible as that might sound.

I quietly enter the eerie cemetery. I'm so familiar with the smell and fell of death, that I barley register it. I clutch the bouquet of paper flowers I made earlier this week. Small rain droplets begin to fall from the trees above me. I pull the flowers tightly to my chest, to prevent them from getting drenched in the light rain.

I silently count the steps I take to his grave. When I reach ten I immediately stop. I look up into the cloudy sky to brace myself. I lower my eyes as the sun peeks out and brightens the graveyard around me. I take a few deep breathes, hoping to calm my trembling body.

After slightly relaxing myself, I slowly lower my body to the ground. I kneel on my knees, and place the flowers in front of the tombstone. Tears begin to form in the corner of my eyes, as the smell of the flowers reach my nose. All of our memories we shared together flash before me. The scent of his favorite cologne I sprayed on the flowers, triggers these flash backs.

As silent tears stray down my cheek, I reach out and graze my fingertips along the top of his gravestone. Smudged dirt coats the grave, so I gently wipe it away with the tip of my thumb. I couldn't help the anger that coursed through me when I saw a small crack run through the side of the grave. He deserved so much better. He deserved to have a perfect clean gravestone. He deserved to get flowers every day. He deserved to be alive...

My eyes trail over the words written on his grave. A sob breaks out from my mouth when I see his name. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to ignore the knife in my heart. More tears pool out of my eyes, and I couldn't control them anymore. I thought after two years the pain would subside, but it just got worst for me. I've become so used to the aching felling in my heart that I just learned to welcome it.

The pain helps me remember. It helps remind myself that he was real. That I didn't just make this all up in my head, though sometimes I wish.

Seventeen years. Seventeen years was all he got. It wasn't much at all, but if he was here, he would say that it was enough. Out of his seventeen years I only got four months. His last four months. Our first and last four months together.

When I met him two summers ago, I had no idea how much of an affect he would have on my life. How much he would mean to me in just as little as four harmless months. How fast he would capture my heart without even meaning to. How fast I so willingly let him do all these things. I would never give up those four months though. Not for the whole world. Not even if it meant taking away all this dreadful pain. Those four months, as short as they were, meant absolutely everything to me. Before I knew it though, all that joy was quickly swept away.

It was the beginning of the summer before my senior year, and I was sent to my aunt and uncle's farm. I wasn't too close with them, but we kept in touch throughout the year. They always had so much work to do on their farm, and so I decided to help them out for about two months. I packed my stuff and drove there by myself in late May. The drive was only about a five hour drive from my house, so not too bad.

I wasn't prepared at all for what was about to happen next. I had no warning that my life was going to change so drastically over the next few months. I accepted everything so fast though, not knowing the pain that was soon to come.

He was there. He was helping out at the farm too. He wasn't staying at their place like I was, but he would come every day, or sometimes every other day, and help.

I don't know how to describe him without calling him beautiful, because that's what he was. He was absolutely amazingly beautiful. Not just his looks, but everything he did and said. If there is anyone or anything close to perfection, it's him. It always was, and always will be.

Somehow, he had similar thoughts about me too. Over the course of four little months we became one. I never thought someone could understand me, or I him, as much as he could. I never thought someone could love me, like he did. I never thought I would get a chance to feel this way with someone like him.

It all happened so fast, like everything seems to. One month became the next, and soon I had to go back home. He was going to stay on the farm for another two months, since school was close by. We promised to see each other every week, and so we did. One week he would visit me and the next I would visit him.

O week, when it was my turn to visit him, I was running late. It was only an hour, but that one less hour with him.

By this point we've known each other for four months, and we were, to say the least, in love.

When I arrived at the farm, an hour late, my heart was clenching. I felt like a tornado was swirling through my body. I didn't understand why I was feeling this way, but it was scaring me. I jumped out of my car and went looking for him. Usually he would meet me at my car, so I was starting to become very unsettled. I started to call out for him when I couldn't find him. I noticed that the door to the barn was slightly ajar, so I raced towards it. There are some things that a person will never forget, and what I saw in that barn was one of them.

No words came out of my mouth. They were stuck in my throat. As tears poured out of my eyes, I fell to my knees. I quickly crawled over to his limp body. When I touched his arm, a scream ripped out of my mouth. I screamed again and again as I gently shook his body , but there was never a response. His lifeless body just laid there next to me.

There was a tractor about five feet from where he lay, and the door was wide open with the tractor turned on and running. He fell out. He was covered in blood that was now dried up. The accident had happened sixty to ninety minuets before I showed up. He needed help, but no one was there to give any. I was supposed to be there, but I wasn't. He showed me nothing but love, but when he needed me the most I was nowhere to be found. He trusted me with his life, but yet here he was, lying dead on my aunt and uncle's farm.

I stayed at his grave for another hour. My crying never ceased while I continued to clean the rest of the mud and grass off his gravestone. People walked by to visit their loved ones, giving me sympathetic smiles. They never judged though, no one did in a cemetery. Having people close to us die, makes us act in strange ways.

After the rain became too much, I stood up and brushed the mud off of my jeans. I bent down and laid a gentle kiss on the time of his gravestone.

"I'm sorry." I whispered. "I love you."

I weaved my way to the exit of the cemetery. My hair and clothes were soaked, but I hardly noticed. I tried to be careful so I wouldn't fall in the puddles of mud that began to form. I got in my car and drove away, planning my next visit in a week.

The End