White Rose

By GoldenEagle

I watch through the effortless work day as hundreds of people pass by, laughing and talking and simply enjoying being happy. Satisfied. Did I ever feel this way? Yes, in fact, every night it turns that way. Every night I dream of her and I'm satisfied. But then I reach out to touch her, to hold her, and the moment it seems I might touch her tan skin, brush her rose soft lips with mine, entangle my hands in her midnight hair... I awake. To know that she was only a mirage of my mind hurts, but what really is agonizingly painful is the fact that she once was more than a mirage, more than a drifting dream. Sometimes her face fades from my memory, leaving me with only the feel of her lost presence, and that's when I panic. My son, Marco, has rarely caught a glimpse of my shuffling to find a picture of her eyes as sobs rip through me, but I've made a point to hide this from him. To hide this part of me that has already crumbled away and is threatened by the wind that will carry it from my mind completely.

I'm in my car now. I'm not really sure what happened between me sitting at my desk and me sitting in my car, I just know what I'm going to do. I'm going to see her. Not really her, but what they put in place of her warm embrace. It almost seems disrespectful that all they have for her is a stone among millions of other stones. My wife deserved the moon as her remembrance, she deserved the stars to cry out her name for eternity. But that will not happen. Not now, nor will it ever. Again time and place seem to escape me, for I'm getting out of my car and this is the first time I've noticed the tricklets of moisture winding down my face. I lick my lips and find the taste of salt there. Like the ocean. I angrily wipe the sea away, knowing that it took the one thing that was dear to me. Wait, that is not true. Marco was dear to me. I'd give my life to see him smile truly. Lately, all his smiles seem to be strained. As if buckets filled with life's pressure were taped to the corner of his lips and he must hold it up.

I'm at her grave, my mind wandering. That's when I notice the dates written on it. I laugh out loud. No wonder I thought of her today. Today was the day that fate pulled her away from me beneath dark, turbulent waves. How could I have forgotten? But now I can't seem to hold myself up and I'm on my knees. The ocean is once more flowing down my face, but I do not banish it as before. Instead I think, "Maybe this is how she felt. Drowning in an ocean of tears." That is when everything stops. I stare at the ground with amazement as another pedal drifts down. Then another. I finally glance up. And what I see there smothers my breath and I find that, instead of drowning on tears, I'm drowning in the scent of you. No, not you, but your love and your spirit for, high above me, dancing on the breeze, there is a multitude of white pedals. As I bring one down to look into it, I realize the familiarance of it. A white rose. You told me once that you had heard a legion... A legion of a thousand nations.... That when a white rose blooms and its petal spread afar that it is the wings of an angel that has brushed by and that among those pedals are actually feathers... Feathers of an angel...

I catch a hint of a song on the wind and hear something so distant and yet so clear to my mind. Your voice. Oh, God, you're here. I close my eyes and open them, just to awake to the sound of a blaring alarm clock. I close my eyes again and smile... And angel has visited me in my dreams...