A grin took over my features as I was looking at our happy faces in the picture.
“David smile! You don’t have to pay for it.”
She had said when we clicked a selfie while tending to the garden shed. Those sweet memories brought back tears and smiles in tandem.
Placing the frame on the table, I began to get ready. She must be waiting for me. After she left, in the last thirty days, all I’ve done is to keep admiring her beauty in the photos and shuffling through all her things.
Removing yesterday’s withered flowers, I gently lowered fresh daffodils on her grave, Daisy’s favorite flowers.
“Happy 40th anniversary my love. Sorry today I’m late. I was going through our albums and reminiscing old memories. At sixty also, you looked so beautiful.”
I sat beside her grave and told her all that had transpired through the day.
“Daisy, our daughter Emily keeps persuading me to donate all your things. But I just don’t have the heart to do so. Now all I have of you are your belongings. How can I give them away? Today Martha had come home to return the money you had lent her. I didn’t take it. I know you would have done the same. She simply couldn’t stop praising you. Together we cried a lot. What to do …? I still haven’t learnt to live without you.”
I stayed there for a long time and continued to talk to my sweetheart. Nowadays I only do this work. Lighting a candle, I placed it on her grave and sat beside her until there was nothing more to say.
Shamim Merchant
