Never Fade Away

Few Summers are golden. Golden in the way that etches them onto your heart. There is a rare alchemy that occurs just once in every generation and everyone remembers that Summer. The Summer where the magic happened and happiness blossomed. The Summer where dreams came true and just for a while, everything was possible. 

Those Summers are where many-a Once Upon A Time resides, but never an ending is in sight, because you see, the Happily Ever After is a promise that rides on the Summer breeze and all is right in the world.

I lost my heart in one such Summer, and then I lost my head. Maybe it was the other way around, but then, once someone has lost themselves so thoroughly there is no telling, only that they are lost and the chances are they’re never coming back.

The Summer in question had been a hot one, but not so hot as to be unbearable. A cool breeze accompanied the sun, they’d done a deal and the double act they formed was agreeable to all but the most surly of people. There will always be those who are not happy unless they have something to moan about. The sorts of people who bemoan the Summer and tell you they prefer the Winter, but in the Winter, they never once celebrate that season, instead they find something else to be grumpy over. This is why there will never be a perfect world. Because there are those who would stare happiness in the face and deny it. The contrariness of human nature is a curse that will perpetuate a morbidly interesting state of affairs for eternity and beyond.

For me, the Summer was a godsend. I had finalised the sale of my second company and I was emerging from the aftermath of the busiest period of my life, bleary eyed and so tired I wasn’t with it enough to even be confused.

I was so thoroughly wiped out. I was a blank slate and little by little, the sun warmed me and the cool breeze caressed my skin, reminding me that I was alive and that the world was brim full of possibilities.

Some would say that I had over a billion possibilities in my bank, but I never thought like that. For me, that money was a by-product of my success. Nothing more. You may scoff at that, if you do, more fool you, you’re more caught up by that figure and money itself than you should be. There really is more to life, believe me, I know.

Each day, I came alive that bit more. I wasn’t exactly born again, but I wasn’t the person I had been, and I was as yet uncertain as to who I was now, let alone where I was headed and who I was going to be. 

That element of uncertainty thrilled me.

In the second week, I cracked open a beer. I had never been much of a drinker, never had the time or space to accommodate it. That first beer was cold and wet. In the best of Summers, cold and wet is all you need. It wasn’t a knockout beer. No champion was this. It did what it said on the tin and no more. The third however? That beer was starting to get special. I resolved to drink beer over the Summer. Me and beer had at last become acquainted and I reckoned we could become very good friends.

In the third week, I walked, and I walked In the pursuit of beer. 

I’d hired a country getaway, prior to the sale of my business. Or rather, I’d asked someone to sort the details and arrange to get me there. That part of it remains a blur. That part is the grey detail that only matters if it goes wrong. In this case, it went right, but for those first few weeks I could have been anywhere. My senses were dulled and my mind was plodding along in a dressing gown, still wearing its sleeping mask and oblivious to the furniture around it.

When I at last ventured forth from the house I was staying in, I began to gain a sense of perspective. Again, this was a gradual, incremental process. I didn’t register it occurring and so it appeared to creep up on me.

The location of my retreat was sublime. I was in the womb of mother nature herself. As my senses came back to me they were treated and indulged and pampered in ways I never knew possible. I could smell the grass! Not cut grass. The grass in fields around me had a subtle aroma that soothed my soul, and when I entered the nearby woodland I swooned. I did! I had made my way twenty yards into the company of trees and I was damn near overwhelmed by my surroundings. The light was filtered by the outstretched arms of the trees and it was magically transformed. I felt like I could step into that light and I would be transported into another realm.

Then I realised I already had been, and I raised my head in thanks, smiling the warmest of smiles I began to experience an inexplicable transformation. I didn’t understand I had broken into a maniacal spin until I fell laughing uncontrollably upon the soft earth at the foot of a huge oak tree.

I was drunk on life, intoxicated by it, and that was the state I was in when I arrived at the Drunken Monk. The pub was old, but the site it was built upon was ancient. At one time there had been a monastery there and that was why the pub was so named.

The first beer I sampled at the Drunken Monk was outstanding. My walk had made me both thirsty and hungry and I appreciated that drink all the more for my exertions. I asked for a menu and the dour landlord handed me one. I ordered fish and chips after a moments glance at the contents within the overengineered binder.

“Where are you sitting” asked the landlord gruffly.

This question struck me as a little disjointed as I stood at the bar, but I got where he was coming from and spotted a small table that would do, “there,” I told him.

He scowled and rolled his eyes, “table five then,” he said as he wrote a scruffy five on the order.

I shrugged and sat at the table, the landlord had walked away anyway, so there was no point in hanging around. His absence gave me a chance to have a proper look at my surroundings. The pub was higgledy-piggledy, the too small windows criss-crossed with lead to impede the light of the sun further. Thick and dark oak beams hung here and there adding further to the lack of light, but there was no lack of air. The place was far from suffocating. There was a warmth to the Drunken Monk even despite the frosty reception I’d received from the landlord.

In no time at all my food arrived. I barely remember the food though, what I do remember was the woman who brought it to my table.

Dana took my breath away from the very start, and for a moment there I didn’t know who I was. I stared at her like a complete fool and she had to repeat herself.

“You ordered the fish and chips?” she said.

“Er, yes…” I replied, “yes I did.”

“Do you want anything else with it?” she asked me.

“What are the options?” Now I was coming back to myself, I didn’t want her to walk away.

“Sauces,” she shrugged, “you know, ketchup, mayo… there’s already salt and vinegar on the table.”

“Mayo, please,” I said this even though I wasn’t bothered about the sauce.

As I watched her walk away, I had a horrible panic. What if someone else came back with the mayo? Thankfully they didn’t. She returned and I couldn’t help smiling. That she smiled back was something both wonderful and also bewitching. 

“Listen,” I said as I took the bottle from her, “this may seem… I dunno… but are you busy later?”

She gave me a funny look, “are you asking me out?”

“I guess I am, yes,” I told her.

She looked around her before leaning in conspiratorially, “you’ve got a nerve haven’t you?”

I was puzzled by this, but then I have always been good at solving puzzles, “I dunno about that, it’s just I’ve never met anyone like you before and I’d be an idiot not to try to spend more time with you.”

“You’ll get us both killed,” she said this, but a smile played about her mouth, “are you staying at the big house?”

I shrugged, “the house I’m staying at isn’t exactly big…”

“Other side of the woods?” she asked hurriedly.

“Yes, I walked through the woods to get here,” I told her.

“I’ll come and see you later,” she told me, and with that she left me. I fancied that I spotted a spring in her step and my heart missed a beat when she turned to give me a lingering look before disappearing back from whence she came.

I left soon after. I needed to be back at the big house for whenever she arrived later. I got home and I showered and I fussed over what I should wear. This was not like me, but then she was unlike anyone I’d ever met, and this was going to be special, I knew it.

The next few hours crept along reluctantly.

When she appeared on my patio I could not hide my smile. My smile was so obvious and huge that I must have looked like an imbecile. She smiled back at me as I got to my feet and we kissed. Don’t ask me how the distance between us evaporated, but it did and we were enjoined in an embrace and kissing in a way I never knew was possible.

This was exactly what I wanted.

That kiss went on for an age and my heart ached as we eventually separated. She stared deeply into my eyes, studying me, “have you ever kissed a married woman like that before?”

My eyes went wide, “you’re married?”

She nodded, her eyes downcast and playful.

“Then why..?” I asked

She smiled sadly, “because nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“I don’t believe you!” I scoffed, but somehow I did believe her.

“Then believe this,” she said and she initiated our second kiss.

That kiss was the equal of the first, but then they all were. We lost ourselves in each other and that was how our Summer was. Dana found more and more excuses to spend time with me and our connection deepened with every moment we spent together, until the very last day of that Summer came along uninvited and very much unwanted.

The very last day of Summer. That one is deeply personal. There is something inside us that knows. 

The Summer days came along, one after the next, and for a while there, we thought that Summer would last for ever. That must be what it is like to be immortal. Never to worry about an end, because there is none. We drifted on that cool breeze and didn’t have a care in the world. For me, there was only Dana and I knew she felt the same way. There was no need for words. Everything we needed to know was contained in a touch or a look. Dana was there, with me and that was all I had ever wanted.

Then came that last day of Summer. 

She came to me early that morning, emerging from the mist like the dream she was. I watched her approaching and imagined the dew settling on her skin. I wanted to drink every last drop from her. I stood on the patio and I wanted to capture this moment. Every single detail. I was almost disappointed when she broke the spell and slipped her arms around me. The disappointment was forgotten in the moment that we kissed. 

“I’ve made a picnic,” I told her.

“Good,” she said, taking me by the hand and inside, delaying our planned walk by two glorious hours.

We emerged to a different world. The sun had taken its rightful place in the impossibly blue sky and banished the mist from the land. The day was already hot, but we barely noticed as we walked down into the nearby valley and looped around to the highest of the hills in the area. We stopped several times and enjoyed each other. Kissing. Touching. Being with each other in the most simple of ways. She laughed. Often she laughed, and the sound of it thrilled me. Her laughter reminded me of what it was to be truly alive. That the company of the right person switches us on in a way that nothing else can.

As we approached the summit of the hill, I was overcome with an emotion I had not been expecting. It was a jostling crowd of emotions and at the vanguard was this inexplicable sadness of loss. I stopped. I could not continue as the grief washed over me, and although I fought back the tears that threatened to break me into a thousand pieces, they came all the same. Dana didn’t say a word. She held me and we stood together there, in the shadow of the fierce Summer sun, as though we were hiding from our fates.

At the top of the hill we sat in silence and took in the view, a view that can never be captured by anything other than the heart. We sat and we took it all in. Together and yet separated by more than the small space between us. 

Eventually Dana opened my backpack and unpacked the food. We ate. Hungry, but unappreciative of the food. After a while Dana reached again into the backpack and poured drinks. 

“To us,” she said.

I’d brought two bottles of red wine, it had stayed cool, stored as it was with the food. I raised my glass and appraised it. The sun filtered through the blood red liquid and I had to stifle a strange sob, the beauty of the moment threatening to overwhelm me, just as grief had earlier.

“To us,” I said, once I felt able to.

We drank and we took everything in around us. 

I felt cheated when I saw the sun touching the horizon. I couldn’t understand how that had happened. Time had cheated me yet again, a habit it will never break. Dana rested her head on my shoulder, the space between us at last filled.

“I wish this moment could last forever,” she whispered to me, and in that moment I knew that it could not. Dana had spoken the words that should not be spoken, now the spell was broken and we were lost to each other.

“Me too,” I said the words that were expected of me and I meant them. I meant them with a vengeance. I pulled her closer and we watched the end of it all. We witnessed the sun fall from the sky for the very last time. 

We watched it all end.

“I…” she began to say something, and I turned to her to hear those words. Those were the words that I had waited a lifetime and more for. This was where my life would all make sense.

This is where her face betrays the moment.

I turn to see what it is that she has seen. I turn and I am confronted with the impossible. The horizon is on fire, and then the fire rises. It rises and then I see it for what it is, and I see it for what it isn’t.

The sun is returning. 

Has it not done with us yet?

The sun is creeping back up into the sky as though it has forgotten something important that it must do. 

I stand and I point as though pointing will at least pause that traitor sun. 

My arm hangs out before me and my breath is ragged, my eyes vomiting tears.

“Nononononono!” I utter my weak denial over and over and I dare not look back at her.

I cannot.

She is not there.

None of this is real.

The sun winds backwards and I am afforded this moment. 

A reminder that my own personal heaven is being used against me as my own personal hell. 

Played over and over again.

You see, this is my punishment.

And this is my pain.

I never wanted it to end.

There was only one way.

I wanted Dana, and I wanted her forever.

I couldn’t let her return to that husband of hers. He didn’t see her the way I saw her. We were meant for each other. We belonged together.

I’ll never tell you where she’s buried.

You can do this as long as you like.

Don’t you see?

This is what I wanted all along.

Afterall, I wrote this algorithm. 

It’s mine.

Just the same as Dana is mine.

Very few Summers are golden. 

Golden in the way that etches them forever onto your heart. We are gifted just the one in our lifetime. In that wonderful Summer there resides a rare alchemy that turns our world into gold. That is the Summer that the magic happens and love and happiness blossom. In that Summer everything is possible and dreams come true.

That Summer was my Once Upon A Time and my Happily Ever After.

I lost my head and then I lost my heart. I knew I would. I’d been planning it for such a very long time.

You never forget that singular miracle of a Golden Summer.

I know I never will.