Goodbye Love

Goodbye Love


The sun gleamed down in splendid glory, shining against the polished ebony of the toombstone standing at her feet. Her hands comfortably ensconced in the pockets of her loose fitting jeans, Amy looked away from the black stone and up at the clear blue sky, her gaze coasting over the other death rocks that littered the grass.

"It seems a crime," she whispered, still looking up, "that the sun should shine so brightly today." Her gaze returned to the earth and she knelt down, eyes level with the inscription.

"But you loved the sun, so I guess it doesn’t matter all that much." Softly, almost reverently, she ran her fingertips over the engraving.

Cole Darren
1978-2003
"I wouldn’t have traded a single day,
For the dance that you and me made."

"You were always so gad damned positive, no matter what was happening. Even when that cancer was eating away at you, you kept your smile and expected me to do the same." She sighed, dropping her fingers from the stone.

"I was so angry at you for that. For forcing me to ignore that you were dying. Angry at you for making me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry and rage at the gods." She laughed without humor. "But you were right. You always were." A gentle breeze ruffled through her long blonde hair, playing with it teasingly. She lifted her face to the wind, closing her eyes as she felt it lightly caress her face.

"I always imagine that that’s you, feeling your fingers against my cheek. The way you would softly trail then down my skin to my lips, where you would rub my bottom lip with your thumb before dropping your hand and grasping mine. I would give anything to feel you do that again. Or to feel the way you would lightly brush my lips with yours, pull back to look in my eyes before leaning down to kiss me again." She choked to a stop and closed her eyes letting a tear fall down her face to drop to the grass below.

"You swore you’d never leave me," she rasped, the pain rising within her once again. "You promised me forever. You told me of the children we’d have in such detail that I could see them. Imagine holding them in my arms. I didn’t just loose you Cole, I lost the dream." Again she traced his name slowly with her fingertips. "I wanted to hate you for that," she admitted quietly. "I thought that if I hated you it would make the pain go away. But I couldn’t do it. I loved you too much. I still love you." She stopped speaking a moment and moved to kneel, one of her hands twisting around her silver eternity necklace.

"I never thought I could live without you. Before you got sick the thought never crossed my mind. Afterwards it was all I could think about. I’d imagine what life would be like without you there, but I could never see it. Even now I expect to see you walking along the beach, or sleeping beside me. Every day I ask myself how can I go another day without, and some how I do. I get through one day and then another and then another. Soon it’s been a week, a month… a year." She looked out over the graveyard again. Staring at the many different tombstones and wondering: Who were they? How did they live? Who did they leave behind? So many questions, and looking at the grave before her, she knew he had become one of the masses. A being unknown to all and identified only by his name, date of birth and death, and a simple quote which only she could fully appreciate.

"Sometimes I feel guilty for surviving this. For living when you don’t and enjoying life despite the pain. As if my living diminished the love I hold for you." She let loose another sigh. "I know it’s ridiculous and that you’d be angry at me for even thinking it, but there you go." Again she paused. "I’m trying to live my life for the both of us now. Carrying your memory with me. You told me to live Cole, and after three years I think I’m finally starting to." She looked back towards the right where a man leaned casually against the hood of his truck, glancing away, his dark locks dancing in the breeze.

"He’s a good man," she said quietly. "He loves me and…" she took a deep breath. "I love him. It’s different," she admitted. "I never thought I could love another man. I didn’t think it was possible. But I do. I don’t love him more or less then I do you, I just love him differently. I told him all about you and what happened. I don’t see jealousy in his eyes when I talk about you, when I cry for you. I think," she shook her head. "No, I know, that you would like him." Another pause, another hesitation.

"He’s why I’m here. I had so many dreams while you were alive and we were together. Dreams of the future that slowly died one by one as you grew sicker and sicker. Dreams that I thought had forever been destroyed when you died. He gave me back my dreams, Cole. Different, changed, but he helped bring them back, and I don’t want to loose them again." Thinking on what she came to do, her eyes welled up despite her attempts to stop them.

"I have to say goodbye to you again, because it’s not fair to him or to our future, to hold onto you the way I have been. You’re no longer alive Cole," a tear escaped. "And I can’t die to be with you. I’ll always love you Cole, and I’ll see you again, when it’s my time." As her tears escaped slowly, she turned once again to look at the other man. "But not yet," she whispered. "Not yet." Turning back to the remembered dead, Amy closed her eyes and kissed her lips before placing them on his name. "Goodbye my love," she whispered quietly and stood, allowing one last tear to fall on the black stone, before wiping it away and turning towards the future and the man who would star in it.

"You alright," he asked in the deep timber of his voice, his green eyes searching her brown ones. Softly she kissed his lips.

"I will be," she answered softly and let him open the door for her.

Back amongst the stones of those long forgotten and those recently lost and all in between, stood the shimmering figure of a new guardian watching the woman he had loved when alive, leave with another man.

Gently he wiped his finger in the teardrop she had left behind.

"Goodbye Amy, and be happy."