Thursday 17 February 2011

She looked at him, as he sat beside her bed. They'd been close once, as close as a man and a woman could get. They'd shared a house, a bed, their dreams. It had been good.

But then the arguments started. No...she'd started the arguments, now she thought about it. She didn't know why. Even now, she didn't know why. Maybe she was scared of the commitment, the giving of her entire self to one man. Maybe she felt tied down. Trapped. One thing she realised now was that it wasn't his fault. The rows that she blamed him for, blamed his selfishness for...she'd started all of them.

Because, when she became ill, too ill to look after herself, of all the people who could have helped, all the people she thought of as friends? They were too busy. The guy she was with when the illness started, she could barely remember his name...as soon as she was hospitalised, he was gone. Apparently he'd stripped the flat of anything of value and left.

Yet here *he* was. Sat by her bed, day after day, talking, holding her hand, smiling, reminiscing about the good times. And there had been so many good times. She knew that, now. He'd done nothing to her except love her. He'd given her joy, he'd given her happiness, he'd given her confidence, he'd given her his heart. And she'd hurt him, confused him, driven him away. Yet here he was. Day after day. From the time she opened her eyes to the time the lights were turned off. Sat beside her, on the bed, stroking her hand and arm, talking, smiling, singing.

She should never have left him.

And now she had to leave him again, hurt him once again.

One more time, there he was, beside her as she lay. He smiled, again, a solitary tear running down his face as he threw a handful of soil in the hole.

"Goodbye, my love. I always loved you" he whispered.

She smiled. Goodbye. Thank you. I love you too.

4 comments:

  1. I can reiterate what I said on Twitter - you did a great job of bringing out the pain of wasted opportunities with her.

    On first reading this, I thought "he" was God, there at her birth, there at her death, always there for her, ready to welcome her back. However, him adding the soil to the grave throws that image a bit.

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  2. I'd not even considered a deity. He's just an ordinary Joe, devoted, dedicated and devastated.

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  3. I can see where Tony went the religious route, especially with the comfort he seems to provide at one point. I just thought he was a nice guy in an obscured circumstance.

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  4. touching story Gaz. It's amazing how much you can care for a person when they don't feel that way back.

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