Unheard Tune
"How is she?" A little black haired girl asked her brother. He turned to her, the one sightless eye clouded over. He merely shook his head, but she knew what he meant. "Mother got so quiet after Father died." She paused. "It is not like her. She is full of talk and laughter. Now she does not speak at all."
The boy straightened slightly from his sitting position outside the bedroom. "There is sorrow. She is sad about Father." And so their talk went on. But little did they know, the person of whom they spoke was no longer in the bedroom where they had left her. She slipped out the bedroom window, and with her cane, found her way through the grass.
And then there was the wooden tap of the cane, and she knew she was there. She sat carefully upon the wooden steps of the porch, and laid her cane at her feet. The memories came back to her, flooding her mind. She could remember every word he had said, and she remembered the brush of his hand on her face. And just as before, tears ran softly down her face from her sightless eyes, a quiet sob in her throat.
Trembling, she stood, onto the main porch she strode. And at that, she raised her arms; one cocked an angle, the other high in front of her. With tears still running down her face, she moved her feet to an unheard tune, graceful in her blind state.
And there her children watched her, dancing as though some ghost was in her arms. But as they saw the tears on her upturned face, they quietly decided to leave her. They didn't know if their mother heard them, or if she was so in her memories that she was deaf also. And for that fact, no one ever knew. Ivy Hunt died that night in her sleep, surely of a broken heart.
I know. Sad. Bittersweet is how I think of it. I know it's short, but I found no reason to draw it out and make it long. Short and sweet.