Anniversary

Our first anniversary together we had been poor. Mac and Cheese from a packet, with non alcoholic wine, cheap chocolate mousse, bargain basement cognac and cheap cigars had been our very cheap dinner of choice.

It soon became a yearly ritual, no matter how well we were doing. Our personal in joke. We’ve always joked about how horrible it was. But the truth is; The fact that the two of us were together makes it taste like the best food from the finest restaurant in the world.

It’s amazing how love can do that. Make the mundane into the magical and heal even the most broken of hearts. Love got me through the hardest period of my life and made me whole again.

I look at her sitting in the lounge now, smiling, waiting for me to prepare our feast again this year.

To me she looks as young as the day we met. Yet when I look down at my own hands preparing the dinner I see the wrinkles and the liver spots and know that I am old. Old age is so strange. The mind remembers the youth you were, but the mirror calls you a liar.

I putter around for ten minutes more, getting everything set. Non alcoholic wine and mac and cheese. Laid out on a small restaurant size table I kept for just this occasion. As with previous years I have placed it on the balcony of the town house, looking out over a shining metropolis, that was nothing but paddocks when we were young.

I walk in the lounge and bring her out onto the balcony. Sitting across from me, still smiling. Beautiful as she always is. Especially in white, which suits her to a tea.

Small talk isn’t really something we need anymore. “How was your day honey?” “How about this weather we've been having?” Not topics of conversation at our table.

Instead I tell her about my day. I spent it in the garden today. A many tiered work of art I managed to build in the small courtyard behind the townhouse. I grow most of what’s needed there, buying the bare minimum from the shopping center down the road.

In short order we finish the main course. I leave her sitting there for a minute and grab desert. A chocolate mousse from the frozen section at the local shops. It tastes like happiness to me, even though it has more preservatives than actual ingredients.

Once desert is done, I tell her to stay there. I clean the table.

Quickly do the dishes and bring out a bottle of cheap cognac and two of the foulest cigars the world has ever produced. The boy at the tobacco shop tries every year to convince me to buy better. But these were the same ones we smoked that first night and tradition is tradition.

I light up, pour the cognac and look out over the city. She sits beside me, smiling, happy, content. We gaze out until the cognac is gone and the cigar is ash.

I turn around. and take her back to the lounge. Dinner is done for another year and now the hardest part of the night begins.

I walk over to the mantle and place her back there, as I do every year. Our wedding photo the only reminder I have of the woman I loved.

Five years together before the cancer took her. That was thirty five years ago, today was our fortieth wedding anniversary. She was the light of my life. The woman that brought me back from the brink. I loved her as I have loved no other. I still do.

Tears burn in my eyes now as the photo before me blurs. I remember the bad times after her death. The five years when I tried everything I could to kill the pain. Drugs, alcohol, sex, you name it, I tried it to an excess that would make even the most drug addled musicians go “Holy shit dude, how are you still breathing?”

Then, one day, as I was coming down off something, I found this photo again. I had burned the rest, but somehow had missed this one. I stood there for hours just looking at her face, seeing that smile that was like the sunrise.

Something changed in me seeing her again. I got my life back together. Apart from that one glass of Cognac per year, I never touched drugs or alcohol again. Got a job and made a comeback. Outwardly I was a success. Good job, decent money, nice car. Everything a human could want. Except her.

So every year I do this. I sit and eat this meal, with her photo smiling at me. This is both my penance and my salvation. This reaffirms my commitment to her and to living the life I know she would have wanted me too.

I have never dated anyone else. Friends have tried to set me up with people. but I have no interest. I met the woman of my dreams, why would I want someone else? I have my friends and I have my hobbies and that is all I need.

I wipe the tears away now. Smiling down at her with my old wrinkled face. I look at her still so young and vibrant and my heart aches for her.

Slowly I place the photo down on the mantle, blow her a kiss goodnight and turn away. I walk to the lounge and sit in my chair. The TV is on in the background and I pull the comforter over my knees.

As I begin to drift off I pray. For the same thing I pray for every year. That this will be the night. That tomorrow I will have fled this mortal plane and will be reunited with her. That we can sleep together forever in a warm embrace. That for as long as there is time we can slumber and know peace together.