Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
It's not warm when she's away
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
And she's always gone too long
Anytime she goes away
Resurrection of the Sleeping Sun
It's raining. It always rains on days like this; days when the floorboards protest the pacing and autumn's potent air refuses to circulate for the unappreciative breather. It's raining and the clatter on the awning as water pelts tin is a rhythmic reminder of a heartbeat currently miles away. It's raining and he wonders why showers never look like they used to, when the drizzle would fall from a sky still blue and luminous. The sun, alert to his needs in times gone by, now insists on slumbering whenever she leaves. It always rains when she's gone and the resulting chill is a strain of bacteria resistant to the antibiotics of warmth. Of course, that even his metaphors are crafted in medical terms is one of her favorite jokes. He doesn't mind being the subject of jest; to hear her laugh is worth any hit to his ego.
A thousand things could occupy a skilled man when forced to rely on his own company. Hobbies could employ his hands, visits could engage his soul and yet neither excites his mind. Perhaps he's become unaccustomed to being on his own. Maybe he's lost the ability to busy his brain with things not centered on her. Apparently growing old means growing tragically dependent. It bothers him, this incapability to exist usefully outside the presence of her breath and smile and laugh. A sketchy memory stretches back far enough to remember a time when independence was a cornerstone of his pride. But when she returns, those troublesome feelings die away and he never speaks of the emotional disintegration that arrives when she departs. He is decay until her sunshine rebuilds his roots. He is rot until her hands remold his form into purpose again. And his purpose is to be with her. A once complicated life was blessedly thinned down to that single truth.
Age can be defied, so her retention of youthful beauty tells him. Age can be devilish, so his mutinous body tells him. His hair, always an unnatural white, no longer needs bleach intervention to maintain the hue. The sparseness of it he chalks up to the cruelty of the chemical. Fingers no longer straight and never without a dull ache used to maneuver miracles, he recalls. But they still touch her with all the reverence of an object holy and entirely undeserved. He no longer recognizes his own voice, though she claims a life long habit of yelling can account for the gravel-infested throat. Standing tall requires far more posture than he now possesses, but he still thinks he can carry her over any threshold life puts before them. If the knees didn't gripe so much, their walks would take them to the end of the earth, if only so that he'd never have to relinquish her hand.
But he must, at times, release her. She still has a worldly function, helping the next generation of healers deal with the issues she struggled with early on; that first incision into a stranger and that first apology to the living for the shortcomings of medicine. Time has carried on a gentle affair with her; gifting her with soft wrinkles, snowy hair and only a slightly bent spine. But the sharp eyes that wrap students in grandmotherly love heat up for him still, even if the familiar physical expressions are tamer. She's out there improving the world that has forgotten him, not that the disinterest upsets him terribly. Because she knows him, finding him waiting with all the adoration a mortal man can contain. Soon she'll retire fully and they can get on with the business of ignoring the planet.
She can wake the sun. Each time she pushes open the door, she pushes the celestial body from behind latent clouds. The simultaneousness of the acts reaffirms his belief in a higher power, because her safe returns are divinity itself. As the light pierces his unreliable heart, the frailty of age falls away. In her arms, he is the strong man she never actually got around to marrying. Not that the lack of legal recognition troubles them. His sole regret is having never created a child with her, as he often wonders what sort of human their combined DNA might craft. There are also no grandchildren, since his son and his life partner decided against adoption. In the rooms and halls of the modest home they built, they have only each other, which has more than sufficed all these years.
The sun never sets on discord and always rises to affection. But when, as today, it fails to show its gleaming face, he has been known to launch a verbal assault upon the orb for joining her abandonment. On those days, the walls are thin and hollow and the restlessness calls worn muscles out of hiding to flex aimlessly. On those days, peace is a thing foreign in his increasingly smaller world. 'Fonder' is a lie because absence only makes the heart grow erratic and he considers with displeasure the medications he's already taking to combat that.
The fruitless pacing has halted and a hearing aid assisted ear tilts to the tin roof. It has stopped raining and all prospects of life rebound. The newborn rays greet him seconds before she does and he ascends into resurrection along with the sun. The angels, he tells her later, strive to imitate her and most spectacularly fail.