Desolate



It was raining.  The rivulets of of water running down the glass harmonised with the ones on her face as she sat looking out of the window, into some lost place in the distance.  The day was bleak and grey like her world. Desolate.  

This last week, since he had passed had been the longest time, with no sense of beginning or end but a continuum of loss and despair.  Without him she could find no sense of purpose; it had always been ‘them’ and now it was just ‘her’.  Every morning on waking, she had momentarily forgotten the loneliness and those first deceptive seconds were the brightest of her day. When, for just a brief, beautiful flash, the mind believed it was all the same.  Then swiftly, the haunting realisation would flood through her like a diseased river.  The warmth and security of his body no longer there;  the smile that naturally turned up the corners of her mouth when she first saw him next to her, wiped away.  The rush of love she felt when looking into his searching eyes replaced with bitter hollowness. 

She had loved him.  He had loved her.  Together they had been whole.  A union of truth.  A relationship of steadfastness, honesty and loyalty that was impenetrable, except for the cruel arrival of death.  

Everyday, motionless by the window, thinking about him hard and recalling every memory lest they should fade and leave her with nothing. Often glancing over at his photograph on the sideboard, tracing every detail with watery eyes and feeling the myriad of emotions swell in her solar plexus.  She needed to move.  Get out of this den of misery and into open space.  That’s what he would have wanted, not this. 

She pulled on her rainproof coat and zipped it up tight to her chin, taking a deep breath to try and relax the tightness in her chest.  This was the first time she had been out without him and it felt so horribly wrong.  Slipping her feet into the wellington boots that sat in their usual place, she opened the door into the miserable day. The first walk with the ghost of his memory.  
She stepped into the rain and made her usual way down the street, his collar and lead, clutched tightly in her hand. 

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