The grave digger

It was a daily ritual. It was his job to dig out the graves and search for the grave within. It remained a paradox to him as to the way of the present World. People would go miles to perfect their bodies but none bothered how and when their soul was hurt and how accidentally they had doomed it to die a slow, painful, unknown and unobvious death. Invariably he found a grave within grave in every body. It was his job to collect all these graves and note their contents. Along with the soul people had also buried many of their unfulfilled dreams. Millions of souls counted and many times more were the buried dreams.

He had specifically requested God to give him this work. It has been decades and he was still searching. It was one fine afternoon and he stood near a headstone waiting for the people to leave. Everyone left except for an old lady. She just stood there staring at nothing.

She must be his wife, he thought.

It had started to drizzle lightly but she continued to stand there.

Someone called, "Grandma! Let’s go". She turned slowly and walked away.

As everyone had left he prayed and got down to work. There was nothing inside.

"How can it be", he muttered? It’s impossible".

Perhaps I missed it; he thought aloud and started searching again.

It wasn’t there. For the first time in decades he smiled. He sat down by the tree and took out the instruction manual. He opened the book for a page titled “Special”. It was going to the first time that he will follow these rules. He had lost count of times when he dreamt that he was opening this "Special" page. In fact, after a few years he had even dismissed it out of his mind that he is ever going to read that page at all. Atlast the time has come. With all the eagerness he started reading......

It read, “If there is no grave within, locate the dreams component (equivalent to “Black Box”) and download the contents into the disk. He followed all the instructions step by step and then sat down to read the contents.

It first gave out the usual details of the person. It seemed that the body belonged to a 93 years old man who had led a very successful life. But the surprise package was yet to be revealed. As he kept reading there were no signs of any unfulfilled dreams. Everything seemed to have worked out as the old man had planned. He kept searching and then he saw it. There was one dream that appeared unfulfilled. He ran the dream through. It showed a young man gardening. The man seemed to be watering a sapling and as he gets up he watches a beautiful girl walking by the street. He looks at her and she smiles.

Beautiful, the digger muttered. So, this happens to be the unfulfilled desire of his first love, he thought. But he was wrong.

As he continued to read further, he saw that the old man had run this dream through his mind almost everyday. This was very unlikely. He opened the manual again and read the instructions further. It clearly said that unfulfilled desires and dreams were touched by an individual only for a few times in a lifetime. Otherwise they are long forgotten.

Then how did this anomaly occur?!!! I must find his soul to know the answers, he thought.

With that he started looking at everything all over again. Just then he heard someone call.

"What are you looking for?"

He turned towards the sound and saw a bright image of a person looking at him.

"Yes, that’s my body, and you were searching for me, it said".

"Glad to meet you my dear friend", said the digger. "I want to ask something", he continued.

"It is a fact that you are the first soul to be found alive but I didn’t understand your unfulfilled dream. You seemed to have run it in your heart almost everyday. Can you tell me something about it?"

"It had to be an unfulfilled dream", the voice replied.

Everyday I saw my wife, the dream would automatically run through and I would thank God for giving her to me. I would relive the moment I first met her, everyday. As a great poet said, “I love her more than yesterday and less than tomorrow”. She gave me everything in life and she is the reason of my existence. Now that there is no tomorrow for me anymore, I really don't know what to do.

"Thank you for making me understand my dear friend. It is a great honor for me to take you to heaven", the digger said.

A bright light appeared to take them to heaven. As they were leaving, the digger looked back at the headstone for one last time and it read……….

Let’s meet again.