Daisy

At the end of the road,

Where the sky turns blue,

That’s where I’ll be,

Smiling at you

It must have been the one-hundredth time Thaddeus read his wife’s delicate scribble on the back of the photograph. Well, late wife now. Thaddeus swallowed hard. It had only been one week, and he still wasn’t used to referring to her as his late wife.

He gently turned the photograph over to reveal Daisy’s beautiful smile beaming back at him. It was his favorite photo of her. She was sitting near their favorite creek, perched on a giant rock under the hot summer sun. The strap of her bright yellow sundress had fallen down, revealing a freckled shoulder. Her long, golden hair cascaded around her neck, with a few stray tufts floating in what must have been a gentle breeze. Her smile was wide, and her soft green eyes were so radiant that just looking at the photo made Thaddus feel warm. It was the same feeling he had when she used to wrap her slender arms around his body and pull him in for a tight embrace. Now, this photo was the closest thing he had to holding his wife.

Thaddeus had tucked the photo away in his nightstand years ago. He pulled it out countless times over the last few months, especially whenever Daisy had to stay at the hospital overnight. Had the poem always been on the back? No, certainly he would have noticed it. Daisy must have written it recently, perhaps the last time she was home. The last time she would ever be home.

Thaddus lay the photo back down on the night table and stared up at his bedroom ceiling. It was late, and he could hear the bullfrogs croaking from the nearby pond. It had been an exhausting day, to say the least. It wasn’t the funeral or the burial that had drained him; it was the countless amount of people coming up to him expressing their condolences. They all said the same things: Daisy was so amazing, Daisy could light up a room, Daisy was so beautiful. As if he didn’t already know how infectious her laughter was, how kind her heart was, and how she could captivate an entire room with one of her long-winded stories. He knew better than anyone how special Daisy was, and he knew that learning how to live without her was going to be an uphill battle, to say the least.

But this poem was a good distraction. Thinking about what Daisy could have meant was keeping his mind occupied and preventing him from slipping into the never-ending flood of what-ifs that drove him mad. What if Daisy hadn’t decided to drive to the mall that evening, what if the man in the red Toyota hadn’t decided to drive home from the bar, what if Daisy had found a transplant donor. The poem was keeping him occupied, protecting him from the what-ifs that haunted his mind. It made him wonder if Daisy had intended that. It was as if she knew, and was looking out for him again like she always did. The thought made Thaddeus's lips form a soft smile, the first smile he made in a week.

After a few more moments of running the poem through his mind, Thaddus sat up and shuffled to the living room. There were boxes of scrapbooks piled on the coffee table that his sisters had used to compile a slideshow for the funeral. He flicked on the small tableside lamp and grabbed the leather book closest to him. As soon as he started turning the pages, he knew this book contained photos from when he and Daisy had first started dating. There they were together at the river when he taught her how to fish, laying on the sand at the beach, and standing on top of a tree-covered mountain. In every photo, Daisy dazzled.

Thaddeus arrived at the final page, then reached for the next book. It was their honeymoon album from the Maldives. He flipped through the pages, pausing briefly to admire another one of his favorite photos of Daisy. She didn’t know he was taking the photo, and she was walking along the coastline, smiling to herself. After he showed her the photo, Thaddeus asked her what she was thinking about that made her smile. She said she was thinking about Golden Field, a place near their home. It was an area Thaddeus had visited often growing up, and it was where he told Daisy he loved her for the first time. It was called Golden Field because it faced the sunrise. If you arrived at just the right time, the morning sunlight illuminated the entire area. Daisy loved it, and she often visited it on her own. As Thaddeus stared at Daisy smiling back at him, he noticed how the blue ocean sparkled behind her. It made him recall something else Daisy had mentioned about Golden Field.

“The field is amazing, but the ride is even better. The long, windy, dirt-covered road enclosed in a tunnel of trees. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, the trees disappear and it’s nothing but a sky with a magnificent shade of blue. I love it.”

Daisy’s words were like a light switch in Thaddeus’s head, and he suddenly knew exactly where she wanted him to go. It was a little after four in the morning, and Golden Field was nearly an hour’s drive. He could make it, but only if he left right now.

Thaddeus shuffled across the living room, snatched up the keys to his truck, and opened the door. The air was dark and chilly, but he didn’t pause. He sprinted to his truck, hoisted himself into the driver’s seat, and coasted down the empty streets. 

After nearly forty minutes of driving through winding countryside roads, Thaddeus caught the first few glimpses of sunlight peeking through the trees. He accelerated, trying to make the old truck move faster. He didn’t know what was waiting for him at Golden Field, but he knew he needed to see it. For Daisy.

Finally, just as the sun was starting to make its rise into the sky, the trees surrounding Thaddeus started to thin. The thick forest was shrinking, and within a moment, he reached the end of the long, dirt road. He looked up and saw the tree tunnel had been replaced with an open sky, which was just starting to turn blue from the sunlight.

Thaddeus jumped out of the truck and jogged down the narrow path. He turned the bend just in time to see the sun’s fiery orange rays cascade across the field. He stood at the edge of the path, taking in the sight, while rows of daisies smiled back at him.