YOU RIDE THE GENTLER MAINE BREEZE
Word Count: 510
We’re heading up the coast of Maine and it’s already strange because for all the times we’ve gone, you’ve been the driver and I would sit beside you handing you a plum, peaches when we went later in the summer.
I’m still not sure that I can do this, set you free upon the wind. The wooden box that holds your ashes sits on the seat, anchored by my purse. There is no music playing. I don’t want to listen to anything except the wind go by. Sometimes I talk to you, pointing out a familiar thing we’ve passed before, laughed about.
It’s taken me a year to make this final trip with you. We’d never talked about what would you do if…? Too young to think about such things, we thought, except in teasing where you’d said I’d end up in the garden. And you, you wanted to be stuffed and on display right in the great room. Sitting in your place on the couch, book in hand, and a beer within easy reach.
We both loved summer weeks up at the shore. We counted days in steamer shells, lobsters eaten on the docks, freshly boiled, torn apart and dipped in butter. Cheese and wine for lunches on the beach. Swimming to that tiny island off the coast and making love, exhausted, wet.
I’ve gotten used to life without your voice, without your touch, without the nights of spooning and the mornings waking to your warm breath on my neck. I miss you more than if I’d lost my soul and yet the days go on in a new semi-normal fashion. But this, our anniversary, your anniversary, was supposed to be the day I finally let go.
I spread a blanket on the long soft grasses on the low cliff overlooking the ocean. The day is bluer than it’s ever been. The air smells sweet of pine mixed with the salt spray crashing down below. It is an almost perfect day. I fill two glasses with wine, slice off a bit of brie.
Memories of other days spent together here flash through my mind. I don’t cry as easily anymore. There is a sweet sadness to it all. It is soft and gently squeezes my heart instead of shredding it with razors.
I’m putting off the final separation of ourselves. I’m thinking of packing up the basket, blanket, glasses, you, and heading back for home. I carry this last of you, this dust within a box to the edge of the grass and stare out at the ocean. I don’t think I can do it. I want to turn and run and never let you go.
But it would only hold you like a fly trapped in a web. Like I am held to earth when I didn’t think I should go on without you. I uncover the box and hold it out with both hands. The Maine breeze lifts and swirls you in its breath. I feel you kiss my lips, brush my cheek, and fly away.
A beautiful piece – I can feel the events and emotions, and especially the Maine breeze, pervaded by memory.
Thank you, Steve. I’m sort of still feeling my way around the emotions of grief and imagining all the reactions to all the different situations it drops down on us.
Susan – I am so moved by the emotion of this piece. I love the image of the Maine breeze picking up the ashes with its breath and the final kiss – so final, giving complete closure. Lovely. S.
Thank you so much, Shirley. It’s a delicate subject and difficult to imagine much less write about realistically and retain the emotions that go along with it.