Losing the Old, Gaining the New

As one might expect. she occupied a special place in his heart. For years he had heard from others how much she had been there for him growing up, even before he himself realized it. Even when the pain of debilitating illness made other tasks almost impossible, she threw all her energy into being everything to him. He was positive that she would have liked nothing better than to have been there with him on his special day, but cruel fate had other plans. Still, he was doing his best to include her by bringing the moment to her.

When the moment finally came, the bitter cold wind blew through the cemetery and hit him like a slap in the face as he stood there. He could bear the physical pain of it, but the emotional pain ran much deeper. It had ruined everything: a moment that he had carefully planned for years, even before he could even be sure there would be such a moment in his life.

The flowers placed on his mother's gravestone that morning were blown away by the north wind, just like cancer had taken her life seventeen years before.

Machismo barely stood a chance as the tears began streaming down his face. Sobbing soon followed as he approached the marker where the symbol that he had remembered her that day should have been. A feeling of regret made the sorrow he felt in that moment that much worse. As he arrived at the stone, the emotion was almost ready to overcome him.

That was when she took his hand into hers.

As her soft, supple hand closed around his, he could feel the ring, the ring he himself had placed there not an hour before. He turned to look at her. While his wife would always be beautiful, she would never be more so than at that very moment standing next to him in her wedding dress.

“Charlie,” she said through tears of her own. “I am so sorry that your mother was not here with us today.”

With those words, she drew him close to her. He fairly collapsed into her as sobbing gave way to uncontrollable wailing. She held him tight as the north wind blew around the two of them. She had promised she would. Through richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, until death did them part, she, alone, would be there for him.

Word Count: 405