Silence hung thick above the rows of chairs. It was the kind of morning that pinched at your cheeks and forced your hands into your pockets; the kind of morning you would spend sipping tea by a fire or perhaps still tucked into bed. A small wooden lectern decorated with white flowers stood before the crowd dressed in black and waited for its first speaker. Rose slowly stood and made her way towards the wooden platform. With her trembling hand the frail figure tamed a stray strand of her silvery hair and pulled a small piece of note paper from her pocket. She begins:
“Thankyou- thank you all so much for attending this morning, it would have meant the absolute world to Tom. My husband was a generous man, a kind man who navigated through his life excited to turn every corner for the possibilities that may be waiting there. He was always the first to jump into a new adventure that came our way, and before we really even realized it we had built a home and a family. When I first met Tom we were both only sixteen, and I never would have imagined the life we were about to share, the journeys on which we would embark, or that it could ever be as impossible as it is right now to say goodbye.”
Rose’s eyelids fluttered shut as she felt the sun warm the side of her face. It had begun to rise above the trees and break though the frost. She couldn’t help but think back of the winter they bought their first home at the end of the freeway-
“Rose! Rosie!” It was still dark when she heard Tom’s voice by her left ear. She peered out from under the warm refuge of the duvet. He kissed her cheek and lifted her out of bed, “Come on, love, get up. I want to show you something.”
“Tom it’s not even six o’clock yet! Can’t it wait?” But he just smiled and slipped the warmest pair of sheep skin boots on her feet and led her by the hand down the hall, through the kitchen and out into the garden. There was a strange air to the half-light at that time of morning, after the moon and stars had gone to bed but the sun was still yet to rise; a kind of privacy, secrecy, about being awake while everyone else was asleep.
Tom helped Rose up a ladder and onto the roof tiles, and once he knew she was safely up he climbed up after her. They sat upon the roof in the brisk morning air until the sun awoke on the horizon and painted the clouds pink and orange and diluted the navy sky.
Pale faces, lips drained of joy, black coats and hats and dresses; all these things were what met the withered Rose’s gaze as she re-opened her eyes and returned from her nostalgia. “Sorry- sorry! I was saying, yes, well we were only sixteen when we met, and when you know someone for as long as I knew Tom and Tom knew me, well, it’s hard to imagine any kind of existence without them. He’d often joke that if anything were to happen to him he’d want me to fall in love again, but I think we both knew that neither of us could ever settle for anyone else now that we’d experienced the joy that was each other’s company. We always knew one lifetime would never be enough…”
Once again Rose paused, reflecting upon the years of her life that seemed to have disappeared whilst she busy making plans. How was it that 60 years together had gone as if it were only 60 seconds? She glanced down at the speckled and crinkled hands grasping the note paper and wondered whose hands were these? Surely not mine?
“Nothing is ever perfect, that is for sure. Tom worked hard every day so that one day we could hope for some kind of retirement, some time to take one last adventure. To be quite honest though, every moment of life with Tom was the adventure. He was always on about some new expedition- hiking the Amazon or sailing up the coast until we hit Indonesia. I loved how he made even the most insane of ideas seem completely achievable.
“But eight years ago I noticed a change in him. Nothing too extreme at first, just odd things here and there: forgetting something we’d talked about the day before, not remembering where he left things… it was no problem until about a year and a half later when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s; a disease that gradually degenerates brain function. It was only then did I really begin to realise that-” Rose tried to calm her voice from quivering, “-that it would be the start of a long and dreaded goodbye.”
The hospital was cold; the smell of disinfectant would seep into your skull and nestle in the back of your throat. This was where Rose spent most of her days, sitting by Tom’s bedside. He hadn’t seen any of his old friends in years, and hardly ever spoke of adventures anymore. When everything began to fade away, she was the one thing he clung most tightly to; but even so, as the years passed he couldn’t hold on forever. Soon there was no recognition when he looked at her face; the stories she told him from years ago had faded to a fuzzy grey in the corners of his mind. She could only watch helplessly as his world of understanding slowly crumbled, until the rubble of what used to be was all that was left. And somehow, she was lost to him.
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