I Should Have Known

It was a cold and rainy September day; outside the window he watched as leave bustled and blew around in the wind. Somewhere up in the sky or in a tall tree perhaps, a bird sang. He wondered what type of bird it was; a blue jay maybe, or perhaps a raven. As he pondered these thoughts he looked down at his feet and noticed his shiny black shoes had bits and pieces of dried mud scattered on their fine leather. The other shoes around him whose inhabitants where both standing and sitting, did not look much better.

The bus they were all in soon screeched to a halt outside of a large black fence behind which the dead lay in eternal slumber. He looked out the window and blinked a few times, making sure that this was really his stop. Sometimes he would see it, and not believe that it was really where he was supposed to get off. All of his being wanted to just stay on the bus and pretend that instead of going to the cemetery, he was on his way to her apartment, or heading to the store to buy her flowers. Unfortunately, none of these were ever true, and he knew that sooner or later he would have to come to terms with the fact that he would never be buying her flowers or going to her house ever again. A part of him still ached to think about it, but nevertheless he found himself making his way down the crowded isle of people, and hopping off the bus.

He absently managed to step in a puddle on the walk towards the entrance. Dirty water splattered all over the hem of his long beige trench coat. She would have laughed at his clumsiness, he knew it. He could hear her laughter ringing in his ears as though she were still there, standing right next to him. He shook his head and continued forward; just his imagination playing tricks on him.

It went further than that though; sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night with the feeling that his arms were wrapped around her. It never ceased to be a harsh realization when he would look over to notice that he was clinging on to nothing, and that it would stay that way for the rest of his life. At first it was hard for him to understand that. For the first couple of weeks following her death he had come home from work still thinking that he would be able to have dinner with her, watch a movie with her, or talk to her even. Then he would always realize that these were all fantasies because as he was getting through his house door he knew that her parents and family were over there going through her things. The thought of it sickened him to no end, but he knew it was happening anyway. But there was no getting away from it. He was banned from her funeral, he couldn’t go to her house.....There was almost nothing left of her for him to cling on to. He had nothing left of her except so things that she had left at his house, and her grave. They couldn’t stop him from visiting that.

The rain was still coming down hard. All around him the trees rustled. The grass in the cemetery was so wet that he damn near slipped at least five times while he tread his way towards where she slept. He wrapped his trench coat closer to his body and pulled the black umbrella he had opened when he got off of the bus closer to his head. He remembered her telling him something when they had first begun dating. She had told him that rain was always her favorite type of weather. She had continued to tell him of how when she was a child she used to love dancing around and playing outside in the rain, and that she hoped that when she finally passed on , her could would go back to that time and remain as a child dancing in the rain for the rest of eternity. The rain made her feel free; it made her feel calm.

He made his way silently over to her grave, pondering all of the things she had told him about her childhood. How her parents were always forgetting her, how she used to love making daisy chains for her little sister and for herself, how they used to ice skate together on the ponds in the winter, how they used to have a little yorkie dog that she named Hemmingway after reading A Farewell to Arms, and many more seemingly obscure things. They never meant much at the time, but now he found himself glad that he had catalogued them in his head. At least, if the world managed to forget her life, he wouldn’t. He was nearing her grave, and he could feel the shivers making their way up his back as he became close enough to read the inscription on the stone:

Here Lies Annabelle Maria James
9/12/83-12/29/10
Loving Daughter
Cherished Sister
Beloved Teacher
Vivet anima vestra