A.N: I was thinking about my grandad as I wrote this...(and I'd just sat an English exam where I had to write about a memory of a house I know/knew and I chose his), so this sort of came out afterwards. Except, you know, this is about a different person. :)
The first time James sees Lily grieve properly for her mother is when they visit her grave at Christmas.
Jasmine Evans had been dead and buried for three months before Lily had wanted to set foot in the graveyard that held her headstone; they hadn't been near there since the funeral.
He stands just to the side of a tall yew tree next to the dusty lime-green Beetle they had traveled in to get there, feeling like an intruder barging in on a conversation between two people in the middle of the street.
The sad thing is, he doesn't know how he should comfort her, both his parents are alive and well. The deaths they have witnessed during the war that seems never-ending of friends and comrades could never compare to losing one's mother, the person who bought you into this world.
James smiles grimly; thinking how ironic the situation is as his wife is seven months away from expecting their first child, and Lily's mother will never even know her daughter is pregnant.
He watches as Lily, who refuses to dress in black has her mother hated the colour, dressing instead in vibrant blues and purples, slowly kneels down to trace the words left on her mother's gravestone: Beloved wife, dearest mother and friend. Sadly missed.
James thinks that these words reflect nothing on what his mother-in-law was like at all because she was exactly like Lily, charming and carefree and luminescent and oh so unique, and he knows she didn't deserve to die the way she did. He vows then and there to make sure Lily's own gravestone will do her justice, and then chides himself for thinking of a time when she isn't there, because they've got their whole lives ahead of them and are about to start a family.
James almost goes over to comfort her when he sees the tears begin to drip down her face as she places the bouquet of orchids she picked out earlier down on the ground beside the headstone, but after one step forward he pauses, knowing nothing he could say will ever be able to grant Lily's wish.
Because all she's wishing for at that moment is her mother back.
So he has to wait until she glances up at him and nods quietly, looking more like a child caught in the middle of a storm than a young woman fresh from fighting. Then he leads her back to the car and lets her rest her head on his shoulder as they drive back home, his hand clasped tightly in hers.
And as they arrive home and get out of the car and James offers to make them some tea, he can't help but wish that death will steer clear of them for a while.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason the fates decide upon, some wishes just don't come true.