Requiescat

The snow falls mercilessly around him as he makes his way down the narrow and ice-clad path. It is the 16th of December, a heavy and suffocating day on which the number indicating the date sends a surge of emotion through his body. December the 16th. He sighs, breath quickly turning into steam as it mixes with the cold and dry air of winter.

As he begins to near his destination, his pace slows, his steps turning hesitant. When the headstone makes itself visible among the other headstones, he stops completely. He stands still for a few moments, a lone man amongst frozen headstones; he is in a garden of death, and the frozen state in which it is perfectly mirrors the emotional state of the man. He breathes slowly, and after a few minutes he finally takes the last twenty steps or so to the grave. He stops a few metres before it, not wanting to startle the silent and dormant feeling of peace that surrounds it.

"Hello." he says, tone gentle and quiet, a velvet voice in combat with the harsh nature of a winter wind.

Spring is yet to wrap its warm fingers around the city, and beneath the layers of ice, frozen leaves and heavy mud, he imagines the vegetation preparing to break the surface. He imagines it is her, wanting to wake up from months of sleep, just like the daises he has come to learn always surround her headstone during the warmer parts of the year.
On the days when these thoughts of rest and peace, growth and silence, fill his mind, he feels fairly fine. He cherishes those days like he has learnt to cherish the air he breathes, because without those days of acceptance, he would not be able to live. There are other days, days that are dark and cruel, cold and painted in the compact and blinding colour of black, days that suffocate his heart until it refuses to properly pump the blood through his veins. Those days scar him.
On those days, all he sees is hair that should – and used to – be a rich colour of the darkest of brown, but no longer is, on a woman that is slowly withering until she is nothing but a shadow of a person. On those days, the image of her no longer breathing body haunts him from dawn to dusk. The uncannily large self-destructive side of him embraces those days, because, in a way, one sickening and gut-wrenching dream, image, anything, about her is better than none at all. At least, that is what he tells himself. On those days – and nights – her ghost haunts him.

He sighs. Ashes will be ashes, dust will be dust, and death will remain an enemy for as long as he lives.

The 'what if' scenarios that he swore to avoid at all cost flicker through his mind without his permission. It pains him to think of how much more she could have learnt, loved, lived. He finds it cruel that it had to be her. Why her? He asks aloud, at least twice a month. Why couldn't it have been someone else? Why her? Why not someone whose days were already counted, whose face was wrinkled and old, and whose limbs were aching for the sweet rest of death? He knows they are selfish thoughts, but so is grief, and that knowledge is enough to justify them.

When he comes to think of it, the thing that probably tarnished her most was his presence in her life. He had always been silent, demanding and bad with words, even before her death. Sometimes he wonders how she could have loved him. Some days, the logic that her love used to bring cracks. On those days, his biggest struggle is finding something lovable in himself. "Love is an action, not a feeling." she used to tell him, eyes open and clear, young and naïve. How can he love her if she is no longer there to feel it? Can one love the memory of someone? And when that memory becomes tarnished, black and cruel, what is there left to love? Can one be in love with the memory of a feeling? He is not sure, but he doubts it. His sad and pathetic conclusion is this: when someone dies, with time, all strings (feelings, memories, everyday occurrences) attached to him or her break. He does not know how to love her like this, so he doesn't. If love is an action, and death holds no motion (for it doesn't, not really), they ultimately must clash. Thus, death must be the opposite of love.

He snorts at how pathetic he has become, and tries to shake the train of thought off of him. It falls to the hard ground like so much dead skin.

He does not remember much from the funeral, apart from when vague flickers of moments attack his conscious mind. All he remembers is the feeling of the cool wood beneath his fingers, the contrast between his rough and warm hands and the cold and compact material being all he could register. He remembers the sunlight and the green trees swaying in the wind, the people that loved her, standing in silence, listening to the wind and the priest. He remembers the flavour of peace that hung in the air and how it, as soon as it reached his tongue, turned bitter. He does not remember feeling the taste of salt on his tongue; he does not remember any tears. The only thing he remembers with certainty is how the smoothness of the wind combined with human whispers alongside the chirping of the birds slowly transformed right before him, transformed into a steady mantra, one bittersweet and agonising word: peace. He knows that that moment will stay with him until he no longer is capable of remembering anything.

"I'm sorry, Kate." He remembers saying to the casket. He remembers stepping away from it, heart beating hard in his chest, a reminder of the fact that no matter how dead she might be, he himself is still alive. He remembers turning around, and leaving not only the funeral itself, but a part of himself behind as well. He wouldn't need it anyway, not anymore.