Waiting on Eternity

“If I knew then what I know now . . . maybe I would’ve loved you better.

“I don’t suppose that’s worth much, now, my twenty-twenty hindsight. But I’m sincere when I say that on my part, at least, there was room for improvement.

“Oh, I loved you as much and as well as I was able. Even when I picked pointless fights, even when I gave you the cold shoulder for reasons even I couldn’t divine—then or now—even when I indulged in the worst and most baseless suspicions about your fidelity. For I felt safe in my accusations. Safe in the knowledge that you were ever true, and would always bend over backwards to prove it to me.

“Then when I cheated on you—the one time—I felt awful even as it was happening, and ever afterwards. I wanted so badly to tell you—to come clean, so to speak, but I didn’t. For not only did I fear losing you, but I feared hurting you with what I’d done. Feared destroying you in a bid to relieve my own monstrous guilt.

“So I kept my mouth shut and swore to myself that I would be better. That I would never betray you again. And I never did. Once was enough to nearly break me.

“Even to this day I wish I’d had the answers. Wish I had a way to go back and make things right between us . . . but I know now that that can never be.

“I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you. You are my heart and soul, and when you left, you took my hopes and dreams with you. All I want—all I’ve wanted for so long—is to be with you again.

“I know it’s too late for that, isn’t it? After all I’ve put you through, you’ve finally wised up and left me for keeps. There’s no going back, no getting back what I once had with you. And I suppose that’s all I deserve, is this everlasting loneliness. . . .”

Lee sighs, and lays the gardenias at the foot of the headstone and kisses two fingers, placing them tenderly on the cool, bedewed stone. “Till next week, my love.”

Then, standing—not so spryly as even a few years ago . . . time has not been kind—Lee slowly walks away, between other headstone and toward the cemetery gates.

Watching from my post near the grave of one Helen Bostrom, I drift silently over to the place where the gardenias had been left in my name (as they had been every Sunday for the past twenty years). I kneel easily and inhale, as I have every time fresh flowers are left.

And, as always, I catch the faintest whiff of their heady scent. Perhaps it’s merely olfactory memory, or just imagination. Just as it surely is one of those when I catch the scent of Lee’s shampoo on lonely graveyard nights.

Idle tears running down my face, I sit with my back toward my headstone and wait: for other mourners and passersby. For next Sunday and Lee’s next visit.

For the plot next to mine to be taken, and for my eternity to truly begin.

END