Lightening.

She was lightning and rain on a cloudy night. Just this warmth beneath the boughs where the rain couldn’t touch. I’d  feel splashes as I sat there, huddled up in a ball. Hot coffee and an old radio beside me. The radio playing more static than music.  But you could hear a violin concerto in the distance. Deep in the static just this pure notes of desire and flirting through wood, bone and hair.

She comes to me on quiet wings. A night hunters wings, I feel the soft landing of the tips of her toes to her heels landing down. I don’t see her immediately. I just feel the vibration of her soft steps from the ground. Her feet are elegant, arched and painted red.

I have waited so very long.

My wife died 10 years ago. It is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. There is nothing more painful. Nothing. She is my other side.  I am lopsided now, walking in circles, nothing much matters anymore. The first few years were hard. I was in a stupor of weed and cocktails. Playing video games and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. I never figured it out.  You don’t ever figure it out. It’s just loss. You just keep moving and hope you see them when you are dead too.

My joints are sore. My eyes bad. My dentures need adjusting. It is a trial to get anywhere but I do. Nothing stops me, it just slows me down. I’ll get there though. Eventually. I’ve pissed myself but I’ve made it. 

The way we met? It was on a dating site. I saw this women with this wonderful smile, dressed sharp, silk necktie on, like some 70’s airline stewardess. She was beautiful. So very beautiful. So I “liked” her picture. The rest was history. We argued and fought, we made love, we went on adventures, and we grew old together. It was perfect. It was the kind of love that you see and you are like:

“The rest of this was not love. This is love and this is where I stop.”

And so I did, right beside her, forever and ever and after she was gone I didn’t want to keep going. We were retired anyway. Most of my friends are dead. Most of my family gone as well. People come to see me. To while away an afternoon with me, but for the most part it’s just me and Morry’s jar.

It’s a very nice jar. It does the job well. All her ashes are in there and I have a picture taped to the jar of her before she got sick.

Yeah I know what I look like at the grocery store but I don’t much care. I know what people say when they see my wife’s cremation urn. I don’t care. She doesn’t like being alone, never did. And I can’t stand to think that wherever she is at right now, that she might be scared and alone. She never has liked being alone. So she comes most places with me. Plus the adventures isn’t done in this world as long as I breath. That’s what I tell myself every morning I wake up and I pat her jar beside the bed.

Before I get up and make tea and cereal. Before I start moving.  I caress her jar and tell her I love her and miss her.

She always thought I’d just move on after she died. She’d always get pre-mad at me. Thinking about some young floozy I’d go off with. But I never did. Not once. She was it and after that it just seemed dumb. She would have loved that.  When she was alive she’d tsk at the thought of it.

“Don’t go off with any Trollops Argyle. Don’t be shabby.”

And it was. She was enough. Always and forever.

And so I step outside after tea and breakfast. I ussually have steak and eggs with a side of toast on the morning. She said it was the

“Argyle special.” But I don’t care. My doctor says it’s not very good for me but at this point I’m just waiting to die. I’m talking to you, not my kids. I’m just waiting to die.

My daughter thinks it’s sad that I’m doing that.  She says I shouldn’t be alone, says I should find someone to just be friends with if I can’t find love. I don’t want it. None of it. I crack a beer and walk down to the garden. We made a wonderful garden. Every year we would pour through the magazines that came to our door, never buy one bulb or plant from them, and then run off to the closest hardware store. Fill out shopping carts full of all kinds of non organic shit.

It. Was. Lovely.

You know how nice it is to go down to your garden, and see…not just a tomato, nay Nay! But a right at the perfect moment, ripe tomato. You take this tomato and slice it up. Just eat it with a dirty little drizzle of balsamic, whatever acid you have. black pepper. I beat my chest over this. I would cut you for this. So sad when all that graces my table are sour winter tomatoes. I am forlorn.

We had a wonderful time there, gardening, and sometimes more. I think one of our daughters was conceived in that garden.  Two others were sadly not conceived in the garden. This whole place is filled with memories like that.

That’s why these people don’t move after their spouse dies. Too many memories in the way. Like a fucking hoarder of dreams and stories and life.

Morry was mine. Not a simple mine. See it’s that real love thing again. She was mine heart and soul. So when I take this jar of ashes out and about with me, I am not only honoring a devoted spouse, a loving wife, but the best friend I’ve ever had.  I am showing respect for my friend whom I miss.  So yes, I do indeed carry her around, and I sit with her when I think she is afraid.

How would you honor your love? Hm? How do you honor the dead but show them how important they are. That you are wrecked without them. That you are none without them. That every breath only matter when they are always there, on the exhale.

She mattered. Morry mattered.

So here I sit, out by the garden. On our bench. I think we had sex here as well. Yep.

She is not late. She has never been late. She falls from the sky like Lilith on speed. Lovely as a typhoon. Immaculate as a sunset. She is beauty like impossible things. Her wings black and lovely. Gentle as a razor she stands before me. I look up and smile.

“Morrigan?” I say and chuckle. Shake my head and look down.

She smiles. Her smile is the smile of a thousand heart throb celluloids sirens. Her smile is seductive and sweet as a DMZ under heavy fire.  Her smile is infectious as corn silk. Her smile seduces me.

“Husband.” She says and sits beside me. Her voice is neither deep nor powerful.  It is my wife’s voice my better or worse voice. My first voice in the morning. Last at night. My everything voice.

My hand is wrinkled and old. Gnarled. Her hand are the hands of a pianist. Milky like porcelain. Her soft dark robes brush up against me, her wings pull me closer.

“I’m old Morry.” I start to cry and shake my head. I continue-

“You’re spose to be on the battlefield, not here.  I know the rules. Why are you here?” I ask? I have asked a thousand times and she always says the same.

She lifts my chin up and smiles at me. Kisses my old wrinkled lips. She whispers in my ear as her hands travel down my body.

“Husband, you are mine, ours, hers. We are mine. I am one and three and thee. You are my favorite warrior, my most wonderful battle. My love and sunshine. Flowers to my rain. You are our remembrance to my softer half. We, I’ve, she has  come to bring you home. My precious tinynormal old saf human…you amaze me, and i have come back for you. As my love, as the greatest of warriors on the battlefield who has never fought a battle, as my husband, I bring you home by my side, always by my side. ” Her hands down my body. To my raging cock. Morry and I, we would wreck a house making love.

My heart beats in time, straining against my pants and her hands and nails, even the way she pushes her warm breath through the cloth. I think of fogged windows and secret messages. I think of faery tales and forgotten places.  She wraps her black wings around me. Wraps her hands around my cock and slowly pumps it. She kisses me, wraps her legs around mine. I  am self conscious. I have always been self conscious, always felt less than laying next to her. And now even more so. I am old. Old and sad. But my heart burn for her. I yearn for this wild and lovely women. I don’t care. I’d know her from a thousand faces, and a thousand days apart. I’d know her. Her touch, lips, hands and such. I know you.  Like the last unicorn, i know you. I would know her in a darkened room. Know her with the first breeze of autumn, or the flick of a cats tail…I would know her.

Her hands make short work of me and soon I am ejaculating all over my pants. I feel a pull in my heart. A sharp pain, that ignores something in my head and she just keeps jerking me off. It hurts so bad. My chest is on fire, my heart beating irregular until it crescendoes, just this beat that tapers out. I am strong enough to reach my hand up to her face before I die.

She is strong enough to beat back giants and Viking and frost giants, but all I need for her to do is sit with me and let me die in her arms. And I do. And she does. Just this frail wrinkled thing inside a super models arms, her wings spread around me with the utmost care, her eyes on me, gentle, loving me, being present with me. I am not alone either and it hits me.

I am not alone either. And she is here for me. To pull me from the battlefield, to take me, she whispers in my ear, our secret.

“No husband. You will come home with me. No more battles for you, dear one.” She lifts me up. She is naked, pure strength and glorious. I am thin skinned and lonely. She picks me up in her arms and walks out into the field by our garden. Flaps her wings a couple of times and we are off. 

She is a spring breeze through the sky. So many people have her wrong. They think of her as dark and evil. But she is so much light and good. 

My heart continues to slow as she flies. She carries me in her arms as she flies, in this firm embrace. Like a mother and child. Or a precious gift.  I drift in and out of consciousness. She sounds slightly out of breath or I might be hallucinating.

“Almost home dear one.” She tells me as she flies. Her smile is radiant, she has me, heart and soul and she flies us home.  She drops down and I feel myself die. I feel the stop of heart and blood and spirit. It only hurts a bit. You ge that right? That the pain of dying isn’t more than you’ve ever felt. It is unsatisfyiny simple. It hurts, nothing more. But she drops down and lays me in the most lovely grass. And my body sits there. Terrible old and forlorn. I look down at it. You would think I feel disgust. No. My heart has never changed. I am who I am no matter the skin I wear. 

My body is cradled by it and warm. I try to stand and she grabs me carefully.  I remember.  Maybe it was just the loss of losing her the first time. Maybe it was just life.  Before she died she told me she’d come get me, that she wouldn’t forget. Two old white haired devils crying in bed together in the dark making promises on dandelion wisps.

I stand up and I am a little younger and a little less dead. I look down at my body and up at my wife. She is radiant, lovely as all. She smiles warmly at me. I stand in the grass naked and shaky as a new born foal.  She nods to me.

“Welcome home dear one.”

“Do you have the jar Morry.” I ask, and she looks confused for a bit. Then she smiles warmly and reaches into her feathers and pulls out my wife’s cremation jar.

I realize they are the same person. But that jar represents not just one life out of many, it represents thee life. The most important one. And so maybe I won’t carry it around as much, but it is important nonetheless. She hands me her remains and I take them gently. I place them upon the ground. I ask her if she has a place to put the jar and she says she can find one. She understands me. She understands why this is important. This life, our life, is all that matters, and needs respect and honor. She reaches out her hand.

“Husband, are you ready for an adventure?” And I am. I so am. You’d think that I’d need time.  I don’t. I’ve waited long enough this whole time, waiting. How many stupid tv shows and videos do you have to watch before you just realize you are ready.

I take her hand and she leads me into the forest willingly. I leave behind my body, wrinkled, crippled, by the jar. Just as important as her ashes.

The forest is green wet, dark, and beautiful. Her eyes are the color of the moss. I’d follow her anywhere.

I love you Morry. So very much. I will never know if I am worth all this fuss, all I know is I don’t want to do it without you.