When the leaves fall from the trees, you have to look at it as the means to a new beginning, not the beginning of the end…
Sara gently brushed the dirt from his tombstone and taking the small offering from her pocket she eased herself to her knees and placed it on the ground. She came here every year, no matter the weather; no matter the internal storm. She came here not on the Anniversary of his death, but on the Anniversary of one shared moment. The kiss they had shared so many years ago in the infirmary.
Sara brushed her now gray hair away from her face as the wind sought to claim it, and promised herself that this would be the last visit she would make to this cold dead place. But she knew this to be a lie. Sara knew that as long as there was a breath of life left in her; as long as her once young heart continued to beat, she would continue these visits.
After all this place was all she had left of him. These visits and the few memories she had managed to covet.
Sara sighed and the wind carried it along to a day when she was much younger. The day she thought she had felt the betrayal of a lifetime. But she had been wrong on that day. A bigger betrayal awaited her.
Sara had been young and head strong despite her weaknesses. She had imagined him to be something he wasn't, and then when she learned he was more than she thought, oh so much more, she had used it as a means to push him away. She had used it as reason to deny her feelings until it was too late.
…And now it was getting late.
The sun was beginning to set; the day to grow cold.
Sara rose to her feet, her knees creaking with age. She turned to walk away…and then as she always did on this special day, she glanced over her shoulder to see the wind playing with the petals of the gift she had left for him.
Sara smiled as she thought of the one flower he had given her… the origami rose…
She stood there waiting under the setting sun, as she rubbed her cold arthritic fingers. They still ached from the morning's labors.
She watched as she always did. Watched and waited for the wind that would come. She felt its growing gust.
And as it fingers gracefully lifted her hair, it blew the rose she had fashioned for Michael across the dying grass.
When the leaves fall from the trees, you have to look at it as the means to a new beginning, not the beginning of the end...