n a flash of light, a nano second of torn time and space, it was over. What had taken 62 years to forge was just gone.

Now I sit here in this dark room, thinking dark thoughts. I wear my sorrow like a hard worn badge. I speak no words and nothing enters this velvet cocoon of purple despair. My thoughts go skipping down the crooked road that is my memories. So many happy times, I try hard to remember them, burn them into my mind. I pull them out one by one and lovingly tumble them over in a slideshow of laughs and tears.

I will never forget the day I met George. He was what my mother called a tall drink of water, lean and lanky. Dark hair and blue eyes that burned with silent laughter. He had a voice that growled in his chest. Work worn hands that played with the brim of his hat, was the only indication that he was nervous. I had been sitting on the front porch of my great aunts house, sipping lemonade with my best friend, when down the lane he came, my destiny. Of course I didn't know it at the time just what part he was to play in my life. He had come on business, my uncle was building a new addition onto his store and George was the first and only man to come apply for the job of assistant carpenter.

Looking back now, it is almost funny when I think of how surprised he was when he walked up on that worn porch to knock on the door and heard girlish giggles coming out of the shadows. Lora and I were nervous and acting like normal teen girls. At any rate, we caught him off guard and he stammered something to the effect that he was sorry and rushed to the front door, banging harder than was necessary in his embarrassment.

Lora and I snuck into the house and tiptoed up to my uncles study door to see if we could hear what this man wanted here. Finding out that he was going to be helping all summer made me feel all weak kneed. Lordy, but did we surprise him again when he walked out of that room right smack into me. I still get a laugh out of the look on his face, all red and smiling with nervous energy. I was determined then and there that I was going to get this man alone and find out more about him. For once in my life I was going to be bold! I felt larger than life and full of sparkling happiness.

Three weeks later, as he came to pick up his check, I invited him to sit next to me on the swing. The rest as they say is history.

Another bend of time, this one internal, and I am back in this dark place. Tears are rolling down my face as I try to grasp the end of that special thought. It is gone way too fast and had only given me a moments respite anyway. Knowing I had many things to do, I gather my courage to move, thinking in my head that this sadness was as much physical as mental. I knew my heart was broken, I just didn't realize that my legs would shatter with imagined pain with each beat of that struggling organ in my chest. Finally making it up, I walk to the dresser and start gathering the clothing I would need for later. My eyes catch and hold on his face, captured in an aging photo. How brass and strong he looked, my man! The day, our wedding.

I was getting married to the man of my dreams. I felt as if I were floating down that flower littered aisle. Up ahead he stood, proud as a peacock and gentle as any man I had ever known. He leaned in close to me and whispered how happy he was, how beautiful I looked in my gown of white. He was mine. We even had that etched into our rings, I am my beloveds and he is mine. So much more than mere words, they were a creed we planned to live by. With each of us putting the other uppermost in our thoughts and actions, there was no telling where we were headed. All I knew was I never wanted this day to end.

I hear a noise and am startled to find I had been standing by the dresser holding the picture of the two of us on our wedding day. The sound was me dropping it to the floor. Hurriedly I pick it up and dust it off, as if the act of dropping it had bestowed pain upon him. I slowly put it back in its place and go to pack the clothing I had in my arms. With each layer of clothes I put inside, the pain became deeper, harder. I ignore it as best as I could and go down stairs and out the door. Closing the door on the house we shared and the painful memories as well I hoped.

How I made it to the funeral home is beyond me. I don't remember the trip, just the outcome. My kids could not understand why I wanted to do this. They told me they would do it or have it done. I am shocked to the core to think of others looking upon him before he is ready. After all, I am the one who combed his hair everyday, fixed his tie that he always got off center and finished with the handkerchief in his coat pocket. He had a collection of them and I was sure I had picked out the one he would have liked. As I unpack the bag I had just packed at home, I notice my hands trembling.

I was trembling with exhaustion. It had taken 15 hours and untold pain, but our baby boy was born. George looked at me with tears in his eyes. The strong man that had held me so tightly every night was crying. He is holding a blue hanky in his hands, dabbing at eyes red with emotion. He looks so deeply into my eyes that it unnerves me as he thanks me over and over. A boy child, another generation with his name. A son to carry fishing and hunting and to play catch with. Finally someone who understands what it is to be male in a household full of woman folk. Granted he had been happy and proud when the girls came, just not like this, this went beyond happy right into giddy. It was one of my more favorite stories to tell the kids about their daddy.

I come around to find myself putting that same hanky in his coat pocket. That hanky had held something precious. I wanted to make sure he took that with him where he was going.