Mary couldn’t remember the
contours of John’s face with the same detail. This was a new phenomenon. She
had pictures of him throughout the house, but they never quite matched up with
the fragments within the crevices of her memory. His tan was just a little lighter than
reality. His hair, a little more soft. His eyes, yes even his eyes, just a touch
more distant.
Perhaps,
that was what started it all. Her
sister-in-law told her the same thing right after her husband had passed. The reminders were all there, but the reality
just didn’t match. Mary would stare at
the photo of him just after he left the Navy.
He looked so young; just a kid.
Yet, he was a man. She hated
thinking of him as a sailor. She only yearned to remember him as her
husband.
She
prayed for him nightly. It had become
ritual. Her mind would slowly thank God
for all that he had given her. She would
pray for the loved ones who surrounded her and for those who had slipped into
the silence of everlasting sleep. But
then, each night, her thoughts would turn to John. He was the one thing she would never let slip
from her memory.
However, it maddened her
to realize that she couldn’t even remember the simple yet unique contours of
his skin. Her memory of him was in the shape of pictures.
Pictures
could be picked up by others and interpreted in different manners. But it was the same for them. They, she assumed, could remember the
details. They could remember the smell
of the cologne. Perhaps the musk of the
favorite shirt. It was escaping her and
she just couldn’t bring herself to believe that what was happening to her was
also happening to the rest of the women whose men were away.
She
fell back on her bed and thought of last year.
It was so hard for her to focus.
She wanted to fall back into her dreams and let it carry her to places
that she couldn’t quite gather at the moment.
She remembered lying down after hours out in the fields. John came in and kissed her. That was it.
He kissed her and it was something that, quite simply, she just couldn’t
put into words. All of her tiredness slipped
away. The kiss rejuvenated her insides.
It made her feel so light. So
light that she felt as if she could float up out of her bed and through the top
of the roof and out into the sky.
It
felt good.
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