Dominique Spearey
Dominique Spearey
THIRTY NINE
It's been fifteen years - Their home begins to show its age, The world outside shrinks. Painfully she sorts through photos, 'I was a good wife,' she says. His birthday, their wedding anniversary, His ashes had been placed Standing near a young tree, My father's ashes were walled up safe and tight. We cannot utter platitudes. 'I've come to the end of my time here,' Who are we
but she misses him every day.
'Look at this,' she says,
handing us sheets
covered with his writing.
'He was so meticulous.'
Angular, precise letters.
Everything crossed and dotted.
Unable to destroy the evidence,
she shares them out
for us to store, somewhere,
as proof of his virtues.
cracks in the fabric of their life together
that no one else can repair.
'I'll never find anyone like your Dad.'
She stays inside,
her memories growing
to fill the spaces of her life
now huge without him.
keeping the ones that define their happiness.
dates that are her only fixed points,
markers in her bleak landscape of loss.
in the same plot as his father's.
The field sloped,
was prone to flooding,
mud frequently covering the marble.
She could not bear this disrespect.
We moved them
the second burial more painful than the first.
we freed my grandfather's ashes,
watching the grey flakes
find their pattern on the grass.
Uneasy, I watched my mother
place his old fishing hat
and a family photo beside the urn.
'To keep him company until I join him.'
Ashes are all she has to cling to.
Time has not healed the pain
or softened the loss.
she says.
'I want to join him
because he's missing me.'
to disagree?