Golden Absence (standard:romance, 436 words)
Author: KShaw	Added: Dec 15 2005	Views/Reads: 3139/2	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
When the mere closeness of a body is enough...even if that body is a shell of what it once was.

Golden Absence 

Copyright: Kelly Shaw 

It happened imperceptibly, conversation slackening to silence. She works
her hands instinctively, deep in thought, occasionally resting and  
moving from her chair to poke the fire.  It has crept passed that time 
when forgetfulness is funny, and now the rhythm of their relationship 
is interrupted, never to be the same. 

They could not, like many companionable old married couples, call at
will upon intimacy. The room, normally so inviting after a long day, 
now seems more like a holding cell. She'd never before felt so 
colossally alone. In six months they'll celebrate their Golden Wedding 
Anniversary. 

It's the silence that upsets her. He is her lifelong companion, yet he
sits there, unspeaking, the absurdity of age blossoming showing on his 
temples. The surfeit of his warmth, never staunched by sleep, has 
slipped, finally, into the icy chill of non recognition. 

Through the window she watches the moon cast its light across the
valley, coming as it did, from behind ponderous cloud, and shedding 
monochrome shadows over the hills. She lowers her head and continues 
with the clacking of the needles. 

Brahms gentles her mind through another evening while he sits staring
into the flames, wearing the pullover she knit for his birthday. As a 
war bride she'd known and understood loneliness, yet somehow this was 
worse, for she knows he is never coming home. 

Disease spreads through him like a hawk, picking him clean, leaving just
the stone terrace face as a façade to his absence. 

His last walk led them as far as the garden gate, passed the Dahlia's
he's always cared for, now disfigured with neglect and unnoticed by 
him.  He looks out over the valley with the eyes of a dead rabbit 
before she takes his hand, and they walked slowly home again. 

He is living, but only on the shreds of decency her care offers him.
There are no conditions to her love, even if such was agreed fifty 
years ago ......in sickness and in health. In two years she has 
witnessed a million memory deaths, the massively dead and now useless 
knowledge they once shared. 

She poked the needles into the ball of wool and lay them on the arm of
her chair, leaning forward to pick up a pencil and notepad lying by her 
feet. 

“.... and we mustn't forget Bert and Mildred, darling; after all, they
were at our Silver Wedding Anniversary.” 

He raises his eyes from the flickering flames and looks toward her,
blankly – 

“You know I always have two pieces of toast.” 

“Yes, darling, two pieces,” she says, picking up the needles. 


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