Reasons to Stay Alive

He first saw her when he was getting ice cream. 

She was wearing a blue polka dot dress. 

His ice cream fell out of his hands. 

She was the only one who did not laugh at him.  

He saw her again when he was walking in the park. 

She was walking with her friends. 

He gaped at her beauty, both inside and out. 

She smiled back at the handsome man looking at her. 

He mustered up the courage to ask her out a few weeks later. 

She shyly accepted. 

He took her to the movies and then to the arcade. 

She told him she had had the best time of her life. 

He asked her out multiple times after that. 

She always accepted, no matter the occasion. 

He found out that she loved blueberries with cream and walking on the beach. 

She found out that he loved strawberry milkshakes and Ferris Wheels.

He told her that he was a college professor teaching philosophy. 

She told him that she was a librarian, helping less fortunate children learn how to read. 

He found himself loving her more and more. 

She found herself loving him more and more. 

He told her he wanted her to meet his parents.

She was nervous, but she agreed. 

He smiled when he saw she had worn the same blue polka dot dress. 

She smiled when she saw he had brought her ice cream. 

He smiled when he saw how much his parents loved her. 

She laughed when they told her all the embarrassing stories about him. 

He felt his heart clench when she told his parents that they had raised an amazing son. 

She meant every word she had spoken. 

He made her cry when he knelt in front of her near the ice cream shop. 

She was wearing the same blue dress. 

He held out a black velvet box. 

She tearfully said yes. 

He found out that her mother and father had passed away. 

She did not realize the extent of his love for her. 

He asked her if she would like his father to walk her down the aisle. 

She cried and said she would like that so very much. 

He sat with her as they went over wedding ideas. 

She told him that she wanted something simple, nothing too fancy. 

He told her she could have whatever she wanted. 

She smiled and pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

He forgot how to breathe when she walked down the aisle to him on the arm of his father. 

She was wearing a creamy white dress and a lace veil, and underneath, she clutched a scrap of the blue polka dot fabric. 

He could not take his eyes off her. 

She could not take her eyes off him. 

He took her to the beach for their honeymoon. 

She adored running up and down the sand. 

He could not look away from her even while watching the sunset. 

She could not believe that she had married this thoughtful and caring man. 

He found out that she could not have kids. 

She was afraid of how he would react. 

He told her he loved her no matter what. 

She cried and told him she did not deserve him. 

He built a house for her out in the suburbs. 

She cried when she saw it. 

He told her he had wanted to do it for the longest time.

She told him that he was the best person in the entire world. 

He found out that she had cancer. 

She was pale and frightened. 

He gathered her up in his arms and told her never to be scared because he was with her until the end. 

She sobbed into his shoulder and told him she was scared. 

He was woken up in the middle of the night by her retching. 

She told him to go back to bed. 

He stayed with her until her shivers subsided, then cleaned her up and carried her back to bed. 

She woke up the next morning and vomited all over him. 

He was saddened when she told him her hair would fall out. 

She thought he wouldn’t love her as much when she was bald. 

He told her that she could be the ugliest woman in the world, and he would still love her no matter what. 

She cried into his shoulder. 

He got the news that the chemo was not working. 

She was pale and frightened. 

He told her never to be scared and that he would always be with her. 

She told him that she loved him. 

He talked to the doctors about treatment plans. 

She slept next door. 

He muffled his cries when they told him that the cancerous tissue had taken over too much of her body. 

She slept on, her body weakening with every day that passed. 

He did not tell her the news. 

She knew anyway, could feel it. 

He did not have the heart to tell her that he would lose her. 

She loved him even more for that, for shielding them from the harshness of reality. 

He was told, by the doctors, to take her someplace nice for a couple of days. 

She told him that she wanted to go to the ice cream place they had met.

He wheeled her down the street until they got there.

She sat quietly, musing over their past. 

He held her hand when she was lying on the hospital bed. 

She was so small amidst the white covers. 

He kissed her forehead before leaving to go to the bathroom. 

She whispered that she loved him after he left. 

He returned to find her gone. 

She would never wake again. 

He screamed and screamed and screamed, and the nurses came running. 

She was gone, and there was no bringing her back.

He did not cry during the funeral. 

She would not have. 

He stared numbly at the patch of dirt that covered her. 

She was dancing in the clouds now.

He stayed there until everyone was gone. 

She had only him, now. 

He knelt and placed a piece of blue polka dot fabric onto the freshly turned-over earth. 

She smiled down from the heavens. 

He reached for her in the morning out of habit. 

She was not there. 

His tears soaked the pillow. 

She was never coming back. 

He visited her grave every day. 

She got flowers every day. 

He told her stories about his work, about life, about how much he missed her. 

She could not say anything back. 

He grew older, his hair graying. 

She was not there to grow old with him. 

He still taught at the college, although his students noticed how he often gazed mournfully out the window.

She was everywhere, had spread her light to everything he had in the world. 

He often wondered what his reasons were to stay alive. 

She was not there anymore, why should he keep on living?

He often wondered why he was still here if she was not.

She was never coming back. 

She was there to welcome him once his time had come. 

He could not believe how much he had missed her. 

She held out her arms. 

He fell into them, like his ice cream, so long ago. 

*I want to say that I cried multiple times while writing this story. I wrote this while I was sad and tired and depressed, but when I pulled myself out of that funk and read what I had written, I seriously cried. I hope you enjoyed their story and have a fantastic day.*