Chapter 7

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me I've been alone all along.

The smile on my face disappears, my breath hitches and the excruciating pain spreads in my chest. I stare at the stone and I feel that my eyes well up with tears and reality catches up with me.

Lorelai Victoria Danes
14.04. 1969- 28.11. 2055

That day in November three months ago was the darkest day of my life and not a single day has passed that I don't wish she had taken me with her.

We were both old. I had problems walking and her eyes were worse than mine. They were okay for watching TV, but she had problems reading and so we spent most days in summer out on the porch in our rocking-chairs talking.

I have to ask her what the book was called that we read right before… god, I am still talking like she's still here and I just have to walk back home and she will be there waiting for me.

She never stopped talking and now when the silence in the house gets too loud, I sometimes think I can still hear her babbling.

Against better knowledge I walk through the house looking for her and after I have looked everywhere I try to understand once more that she's not there any longer.

It was the day of the first snow and when Lorelai was still asleep when I woke up in the morning I knew that something was wrong.

For fifty years she had always woken me up for the first snow and had dragged me out into the cold as happy as a kid that her present had arrived.
I complained, griped and grumbled but enjoyed it anyway, sharing the moment with her and looking at her while she was bouncing out of sheer joy. Her eyes would light up, her curls bounced with her and her smile seemed to light up the night around us, at least that's how it felt for me.

Yet, this day she slept and when she finally woke up we both knew that it wouldn't be much longer.

Like animals that lie down to die we humans also sense it when it's time for us to go and the look in her eyes showed me that she knew that she would die.

She got up, had a cup of coffee and went back to bed. The energy that usually pulsated around her like a shield was gone and an incredible desperation came over me.

I wanted to yell at her that she should fight because she wasn't sick.

I wanted to lie down beside her and die with her, but my time hadn't run out yet.

I called the kids and the panic in my voice must have let them know that I was telling the truth when I said that their mother was dying.

Rory had been in New York at the time which made it easier because she didn't have to travel for too long.

She asked for some time alone with her mother and I don't know what they talked about, but she wasn't as desperate as I thought she would be when she came out of the room. The other four said goodbye as well. April was also there.

When I went into our bedroom and we were alone for the last time, she was nearly too weak to speak.

"I love you," was the only thing she said and she repeated it quietly like a mantra. I held her hand and tried to tell her what I was feeling, but I couldn't find the words. I stared at her, unable to speak and yet I am sure that she knew what I was thinking.

She pressed her hand to my mouth, her movements already agitated and she pulled me down to her and kissed me one last time.

"I'll warm up the cloud for you," she smiled shakily and the mischievous glow in her eyes came back one last time.

"Ok," I nodded and smiled back at her and that is how the kids found us when they came into the room.

Lorelai died with that smile on her face.

I can't remember her funeral, only that Toni supported me, because since she has gone walking seems to be so much harder.

I can still hear Sookie's and Michel's sobs but I don't know if I cried.

Everything is so much harder: Getting up in the morning, walking, talking, eating and falling asleep.

The kids look at me and worry and they visit me more now than they ever did before, but what Lorelai has taken with her they can't give me back.

Beloved mother and wife says the inscription on the grey sparkling gravestone directly under her name. Slowly I crouch down and take the lighter out of my pocket and light the candle on her grave.

The words on the stone don't do her any justice, just like all of my words never could do her any justice.

Death is the beginning of eternity, says the small inscription on the stone, under the free space where my name is going to be, like we had agreed.

I am sure that she is sitting on her cloud now waiting for me while I look back on our fulfilled life.

With difficulty I get up and take a last look at the grave that I visit every day before I turn around to start my way home, which seems endless.

I won't have to wait much longer, I can feel it.

I am not afraid. She will be there.

The end

Thank you for reading this story and I hope you liked it!

My goal with this story was to write in the first person for once and make this a story from luke's point of view, which I never did before. That it got so dark is basically a coincidence, since I got the idea for the story when I was standing on a bus stop waiting for the bus. It was dark, it was cold and I was freezing. I looked around me and saw this old tree without any leaves. And the story was born. As soon as I got home I started writing.

I know inspiration hits me at strange moments!

Thanks to Steph and Grizzly who both betaed parts of this story and had some troubles with the strangely translated sentences sometimes. I wrote the story in german first, another thing I did for the first time.

See you at the Chat-a-thon!