A Time To Go

In all the years had I come here, had I seen the sun rise so spectacularly like this. It’s as if the rays of golden light themselves would shine happiness on us.

She was sitting beside me, holding me tight as we were high up in the sky, on the summit where we could see the land below us for miles and miles.

    “Don’t you ever get fed-up of coming up here?” Asked Rachelle.

    “Not really because this is the only place where I can find true meaning and enlightenment,” I replied. She gave me a little smile and then rested her head against my shoulders. I love it when the light hits her eyes, it’s like they change, they become mesmerising as the golden hue changes the value of a dull green to them being beautiful emeralds eyes.

She really is the only love I’ve ever had and ever want. I think God made us  soulmates from the day we were born. We’ve known each other for twenty-years now and there’s never been any man or woman that has tried to steal us away from each other. 

We’re pretty inseparable.

“Before it’s too late Simon we need to figure out where we go from here?”

I knew exactly what she meant but, I’d spent many nights not trying to think about it. And now the time was here for me to do just that to think of what the right thing to do is.

This summit of Snowdonia we’re on is pretty much midpoint in our lives. She’s told me she wants to be closer to her family but my dilemma puts me in a position where I have to choose. She doesn’t get on with mine, in fact, hers and mine hate each other to the point that if they did ever meet for a second time, there’d be a blood feud on my hands.    

*

The week leading up to this hiking trip was somewhat eventful. My profession is in banking and finance and I was set to sign a new contract with the Royal Bank of Canada so my Rachelle could be close to her family. Why they had emigrated there from the UK I shall never know.

 And then came the best news any guy could wish for, Rachelle had announced the pregnancy. We hoped not one but two, we wanted twins and Rachelle had a good feeling she was carrying twins. 

But then disaster struck, my mother fell ill and I felt committed as an only child like she’d committed all those years ago when I was a child to bring me safe and well prepared to enter the big wide world, I had to return the love and caring to see my mother well again.  

So I'd caught the next flight home, Rachelle had insisted to stay in Canada for a couple of days and then return. Which thankfully she did because I needed her, I needed her love and kindness to comfort me in my bereavement.

*

I could sense Rachelle waiting for a reply.

"My mother has just passed away, I can't think straight right now," I said.

"You can’t keep living in the past. There's a new life waiting for you, with me," Rachelle said.

"I don't know," I replied.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

I could sense a tinge of anguish in her voice. I had a feeling something was wrong. I moved closer to her so I could hold my wife and my unborn twins but she slid away, keeping a small space between us.

“What’s the matter my sweet darling,” I say.

“You keep going on about this and that and the death of your mother. But death has never been a part of you has it? So you don’t know how it encapsulates you in a dark place that wears you down.” 

For some considerable time we sat here in silence, just letting the majestic vista that this summit gave us, occupy our souls. But I couldn’t help but mull over the words, death has never been a part of you. I could not comprehend.

“Has someone in your family passed away? I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you,” I say.

“It’s me Simon. Death is a part of me,” said Rachelle.

“Oh please no. No it can’t be.”

“Yes Simon. Our babies have been taken away from us,” Rachelle replied, holding her stomach.

“In here was our future Simon,” she continued, as her hand gently caressed her stomach.

On seeing this sun rise it had given me spirit but now, that spirit had gone. I was in the dark place that my Rachelle had fallen into.

“Why have you endured this all by yourself? You should’ve told the minute you’d felt that something wasn’t right. You had stolen my right to be at your side, as your husband to comfort you. You must have been in physical pain when it’d happened, why didn't you reach out to me?” 

“I don’t know Simon. I don’t know if I’m to blame for what happened. Do you blame me for what has happened?”

“You must think I do because you won't let me get close to you, to hold you, to comfort you. For us to share our grief together.”

“I’m trying to deal with it in my own way Simon and, at this moment in time, there’s no place for you in it.”

“Are you trying to say you’re shutting me out?”

“Yes Simon, I need to be alone, I don’t need any emotional vagaries right now. You see Simon, what is hard for me to accept is that my womb where life was growing, is now a sepulchre for the dead within me, a permanent memory, that will permanently torment me.”  

“Let me in, I can help you through this. We can get through this. The family too in Canada can help.”

I could see that an iron curtain had divided us and that I had to let her deal with this in her own way. I closed my eyes and lay back for a while, and started thinking of what could have been. But I only started to sink deeper into the darkness. I quickly sat up and Rachelle was not at my side. She was balancing on the ridge, looking down at the shear drop.

“I’m sorry Simon,” she calls out to me.

But I have no time. It was as if the sky had lifted her itself and allowed her to drop so she could enter the world of the afterlife.

*

In some myths, it states that the sun gives us our spirits.

In some myths, it states that the moon gives us our souls. 

As the moon is full tonight and I marvel at its light shimmering on the lake, I wait patiently for my soul to return where life awaits me to start anew.