Seventy years. It doesn’t seem possible. I still remember the weight of the dress — too heavy for such a warm June day — and the wild thumping of my heart as I waited behind the church doors. I was twenty-two, barely more than a girl.
I was desperate for a little house on a quiet street, for children’s laughter echoing in the yard, for a love that would outlast every storm.
We rode off in a battered car, its engine sputtering like our jitters, toward a future we sketched in our minds. I had so many hopes; that we’d travel. That we’d have children who’d grow kind and brave. That we’d still laugh when we were old. I was afraid too. That the war would come back. That money would run out. That love would fade.
Some hopes came true. Some didn’t. We never made it to Paris, but we made it through three mortgages and four children. We lost a baby. And nearly lost each other, once — a silence between us that lasted months. But we came back. We always came back.
Tom’s been gone twelve years now. And sometimes I still reach for his hand in the dark.
But that girl — that girl in the heavy dress — she didn’t know what love really was. She thought it was the wedding. The promise. But love is what came after. Love is seventy years of folding laundry and quiet forgiveness and holding each other when the world felt like it was falling apart.
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Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 