Love Story
Once upon a time...
“Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust.”
The wooden box lowered, as the man in the white robes stood and watched down onto the stone. A young girl with quiet sobbing tears streaming was trying to claw out comfort in the arms of an old man with greying hair. He held her, his eyes fixed on the words that read Beloved Wife and Mother, tears were welling in them. A circle of people were all gathered one step behind the man and the young girl. Some Stood straight and tall, like nothing could touch them. Some looked at the girl with an expression of pity in their eyes, others stared firmly at the stone with a look of sadness, anger, futility or just boredom. Everyone was wearing black darker than the shadows that they cast on the perfect green. Some wore sunglasses and held crumpled tissues in their hands, like tiny flags of surrender to a larger force. There was a silence that was now cast over the people, the sound of the young girls tears were muffled as she nestled her face deeper into the coat of the older man. One or two at a time the people in the outer circle crossed the invisible line into the inner sanction. The young girl and the man broke away in their coming, each time someone approached they were hugged or held. Some put their hands on the old mans shoulder, some got down on their knees to look the young girl in the eye and hold her. Words were exchanged, and sometimes a smile would be forced onto the peoples lips. All of their eyes were starting to dry, and the invisible line that seemed to separate the people from the old man and the young girl had seemed to have disappeared. The circle was now drawn closely around them. In this time the man in the white robed had vanished from the sight. He walked away from the group up a path to where there was a red car. He pulled of his white robes and tossed them in to the back seat of the car, transforming himself. He then got into the car and drove out of the large iron gates, into the normal world. Outside the gates there was normality, a large place where you didn’t have to notice anything you didn’t want to, and time kept going. Inside the gates the people were all still gathered around, though now they started to leave. One and two at a time first, them they all turned from the stone and walked down the path to the gates. They walked in small groups that formed a long line.
She watched them leave, like a precession of black ants, burdened with their grief. She watched them leave. The black theatre, she had watched it all that day. Standing in the background, outside the invisible line that encased the young girl and the old man. Outside the circle that all the other people stood in. Today for the first time she had watched the play from afar, every other day she had simple sat and waited. She saw the look on the young girls face, and the suddenly understood the plays that people had put on for so long a time in her garden. Even now, after the people had left, she could still see the circles. The lines on the ground were now visible to her, and she replaced in her mind where everyone had been. She saw them all crossing the lines in the ground, and saw why she could not. She saw that she was an outsider, and for the first time she felt truly alone. She retreated the thoughts and all the people vanished from her mind. Taking a deep breathe in she walked over to the the grave, the lines had disappeared. She started to do what she did everyday at this time, with a shovel she took from the mound of dirt beside her and started to replace it from the hole that it came from. She made the earth swallow up the wooden coffin, planting a new seed in her garden. A seed that had grown into a cold stone tree, with the words Beloved Wife and Mother etched into it. With each shovel of earth that she poured onto the coffin she remembered every other service that she had seen in her garden. The way that the people stood so close, and held each other. The invisible lines where in they all stood together, and she stood outside alone. She realised that she had been alone all this time, even though she was surrounded by people, The ones that lie under the stone trees, she was alone. She knew them all be name, the names that were written on the stone. She used to believe that that’s who it was that was there, in her garden to tend to. But now she saw that the person that was lying there had now become all the people that stood around them. She couldn’t read the name on the stone, only the words Beloved wife and mother. This person had left with the people that she had come in with, in their memories and hearts. The only memories that she had were of people leaving her garden, and all the people that they left in the ground there were only shells. She was alone in her garden.
She walked through her garden of empty stone and marble, seeing that all her old friends were never there. The line that she walks home in the opposite direction to the gates is now a hostile negotiation with the stones and grass. She was an alien outside the gates, and that’s why she came to live here. Finding that dead peoples needs were just so much easier to manage. When people are alive they cluttered up their lives with complications and lies. Inside the gates there were simple truths and needs. She never felt lonely, finding company in the names on the stones. Now that truth had changed, and the only thing left in her garden was emptiness. She walked to her house of brick amongst all the stones. She walked in and closed the wooden door behind her, closed the lid of her coffin and laid down, empty inside. Her mind raced with thoughts about what she had witnessed that day, and she came to the decision that she was missing something in her life. She was missing real human contact, all those people had been so close together, sharing a collective mourning that made them one. All coming together over one person, and taking them away in their hearts.
People are strange.
She thought, but for the first time she realised that she wasn’t one of them. She wanted to be, and she felt envious of those that were connected in the mortal coil. It seemed that she walked between the two worlds of life and death, with nothing to keep her in either place. Ever stone that she past on the way around her garden seemed to call to her. Beckoning her to join them completely, to be swallowed deep beneath the sunlight. Her eyes closed, and the night swallowed her thoughts into dreams.
And every day...
“Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust.”
She stood in the background, just out of sight of all the people. Thinking that the sight of her in dusty overalls and a shovel in hand would make them feel uneasy. The person who was going to make the earth finally claim their loved one. She had no other clothes, because her life was to fill in the graves, that was what gave her meaning. Now she had found something that gave her fleeting seconds of humanity. She couldn’t feel anything for the person buried in the ground, but she became addicted to grief. She stood and watched the funeral games and saw the way that people moved, the way death affected everybody. She saw the feelings inside every person that stood. The ones that tried to stand tall as support, being eaten up by their own pain inside. Those that let everything flood out in streams of tears. Those that stood in the inner circle, the difference between friends and families, husbands and children. The world that lived behind their eyes, even the ones shielded by glasses, she could see the tears escaping from underneath. For weeks she stood and watched, as an outsider, more and more reminded her of how far away she was. Only for a second she could escape and be one of them in the inner circles. She treasured those fleeting moments, it made her heart feel weak. Like it could explode with emotions that he had never until now felt, the feelings of death and grief were so strong. Stronger than she had ever felt before. She wanted nothing else than to be a part of the games. To feel so strongly that it could make fill every inch of her being. She began to explore every inch of her garden. Looking at the trees and that grass, the stones and the flowers. Mostly she saw the words. Beloved Wife and Mother. The words of who people are, and the names of the people that carried their soul out with them. She didn’t just maintain her garden now, she tended to it with a feeling that she could not name.
In the farthest corner of her garden found something that stole her breath for a moment. A grave that was not laden with flowers or photos. This grave have something else as a dedication. It had a sculpture that stood almost as high as she was. Made from branches that had fallen from the sounding trees. The twisting dead branches were strung together finding new life the form that they had now found. She could see the image of a woman behind the sculpture, a portrait had been painted behind the messy array of branches and twine. Every part of the portrait was alive, except for her eyes. Her eyes were cold, and stared downward at the gravestone, and her face could not be seen. She wondered about the person had made the beautiful work, alive with death. Everyday she would watch the services and go to this corner to admire the statue, trying to find meaning in it. Almost a week had past since she first discovered the dedication, and the statue was starting to wilt, life slowly escaping it. With each day she became more connected to the statue, and as it wilted pieces of her died. She saw that it would not last another day, and wanted so much to tend to it so that it would not die. It was not hers though, and so she could not touch it. The statue reminded her of herself, a being that was walking between the worlds of life and death, not belonging to either. Like something held it in the middle. That night she went to sleep with sadness for what she had seen, the slow decay of the statue, that would not be able to hold its form for another night.
That morning she awoke, walking across the foot cold floor and escaped the lid of her coffin to step outside in to her garden. She walked the line between the stones to make her way to the corner of her garden to see witness the dead of the maiden statue. She dragged her feet, sadness in her heart to think that the beautiful woman would be dead when she got there. The pieces of humanity that she had found over the past week will have died again, leaving her empty once more. She climbed the last step with her eyes tightly pressed together, afraid of the image that would reveal itself in front of her lest she opened them. She opened them...
Her heart swelled, for in front of her was a beautiful statue. The outside form had been renewed, and the woman behind it stood the still behind it. She had been kept alive by someone in the dead of last night. Though the outside sculpture was completely different, it was still the same woman behind it. She stood in the same poise, dead eyes staring down at the stone, and a face that was somehow hidden from the light. In her time free from digging she spent admiring the statue, days passing and taking little pieces of life away from it. On the sixth day she went to sleep after visiting the nearly decayed statue. Her heart was filled with hope that on this night it would renewed as it had been the week before. Her head spinning with thoughts about who or what it was that was keeping her alive. She understood that it was the soul of the woman from the grave that she stared at. Something was keeping her in this world. It was like she had not been carried out in the hearts of the people that had stood around at her service. That was why she was appearing here, so that someone could hear her? Sleep called her loudly over her thoughts, and she fell into its arms.
She scrambled up the stairs with anticipation, wanting to witness the woman's new resurrection. Her form had again been kept alive behind the new a figure. She followed her thought from last night as her eyes tracked over every inch of the figure. Her eyes were not alive as the rest of the statue, so her soul wasn’t there at all. It was someone trying to keep her alive so that they could talk to her. There was no face that could be seen on her because it could not be captured by the artist.
Months when by in this timeless place. Measured for her now only by the cycle of the woman in her garden. Her decay and rebirth. She wondered so much about the person who was the artist tethered to this woman. Every sixth night that she lay in bed thinking about hiding in the corner of her garden to watch the artist come to renew the sculpture. It made her feel more like an outside with the knowledge that she could never go and watch, for it was not her world to intrude upon. She was but a secret observer in the relationship, never able to be touched by these players. Her mind was taken over by the wondering, and she dreamed all the nights about the person that come in the dead of night to manipulate the branches to form the image of this woman without a face.
Until One Day...
He walked alone in though the gates. The large iron ones were closed because of the hour, but there was the side gate that was always open. He made his way up the path, even in the witching hour there was still enough light to the way through the stones. The soft blue moon light slid over all the stone, making them luminous and look alive. He walked past them all to the far corner of the graveyard to a place with a wilting statue of branches was lit by the moonlight.
“I’ve come to sit beside you.” He whispered, as he knelt down beside the stone. He said that to her ever week that he came here. He past his hands over the impressions of word cast into the cold stone. His fingers following the tracks of the letters that spelt the name. All the sounds of the earth seemed to disappear, the cicadas being forgotten for the sound of flesh passing over the stone. He looked at the stone, and them cast his eyes up at the wilting statue, stood and walked over to it. Delicately he started to deconstruct its form, taking the branches away, and piece by piece unravelled the form behind it. He studied the scattered branches on the ground, and his hands shared the cold touch of them. A howl of a wolf far off in the distance startled him, and for a second he remembered the howl of the beansidhe that he had heard in his dream once long ago. It was from that time on that he had ceased to feel. He looked again at the branches scattered on that ground around the stone. A feeling off hopelessness came over him, and he stood and walked to the gates, without turning back he past through them and into the outside world.
She awoke that morning, and stepped outside into the day. Her heart anticipating to see the new statue that she had gone to sleep the previous night waiting for. She climbed the stone brick steps up to the small plateau. She came to stop and felt a stab just left of the middle and her heart stopped for second. Her eyes surveyed the crash sight, all the twisted branches lying dead on the ground. She knew that it was not an act of malice that had brought it about, for each branch lay on the ground with the same attention that had been put in when they were standing. She felt every beat of her heart in her chest as a few tears escaped her eyes. There was something that she just did not understand, she wondered why the artist just ceased to care about the woman that they had taken so much care in resurrecting. She felt the pain of the artist’s heart in hers, giving up on something lost. She turned and walked back into the thick stone trees of her garden, looking back once to put a wall up in her mind around the once sacred corner. Never again did see want to feel the pain that she felt upon looking at the dead branches scattered on the ground. Only one other person could understand the significance of the scattered branches, and that was the one who had lost hope in their hands. Her life turned back into a routine crawl, standing ready in the background to fill in the soil around another seed in her garden. She watched the funeral games the mourners played, and as she watched the feelings in her heart was now coupled with the pain of one person who had lost.
My heart didn’t used to beat this way.
She thought. She could feel it inside her breathing in and out with such fragility. A heart that had not felt so much before was now weaned by the grief and death that was her home. It was now starting to touch her.
“Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust.”
The words of the sermon drifted to where she caught the end. Those words had been recited by the man in the white robes three times that day for three different people. The same words heralded the end of his speech, each time for a different person. Each time after her shed his white robes and disappeared, leaving the people to cry together. It was the third and last time that he came today, retreating now to his life outside the gates. He would come again tomorrow to read the last rights for another name on a stone. The mourners played on without him and then made their way out the gates, carrying the person out with them in their hearts. She watched them leave, and cast her eyes back to the hole in the earth. One man still stood there, staring down at the grave. She walked a little closer to study his face. A quiet curiosity came over her as she had seen this man at the two other services today, and he stood now staring down at the grave with a hint of anger and futility in his eyes. He seemed disconnected from the name. Slowly she walked over to stand beside but still a little behind him. Minutes of silence passed as the two shared the space, her mind was turning over what to say, but before she found the words he broke the silence between them.
“You’ve come to fill in the earth.” He said and turned to look at her, and then turned back to the stone. She was stunned by the look he carried, a look of pain buried deep within, hidden behind numb eyes. It was the first time that she had been close enough to see the pain in a person. Her mind stuttered as she pushed the words out over her tongue.
“Yes.” She stared. “I’m... I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It’s OK, I didn’t actually know her. I just came because... I came to all of them today because...” His voice started to stagger, and the words stopped coming.
“I saw you here all three times today.” She implored, trying to prompt him to finish his story.
“It’s not her.” He said. “It was someone long ago. I came because it’s still inside me.”
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“I don’t know how to say it, but I can show you.” He turned to look at her again, his eyes piercing her flesh.
“Yes.” She replied, feeling strongly connected to his loss and isolation. They walked off together with her beside and half a step behind him, all the time her eyes were wandering over his neck and shoulders. He lead her across the grounds of her garden and through the stone trees. The path they marked was becoming familiar to her in the direction they were heading. When they came to the top of the stairs in the corner of the graveyard they hesitated for half a second, and then together they broke through the wall that had been put up around the sight in both of their hearts.
“I used to come every every seventh night,” He started saying. His eyes not making contact with hers, but scanning around as he, one at a time, picked up the twisted branches that laid scattered on the green grass. He stopped and looked down at the stone, loosely holding the branches in his arms beside him “She was my wife... She was taken from me by something so small that it could break her from the insides without anybody being able to see it... She died by the hands of something that I couldn’t see...” His calm voice changed to an angry tone, as his breathing became heavier and more forced. “It was still her all the time though... There was something inside her that nobody could see, and it killed her.” He started piecing the wood together, first in his mind and then his hands followed its lead. As his started weaving a living form together out of dead wood his words started again on their trail, and his voice dropped down into hopelessness. “I can fight something that I can see, and she could have too.” The figure was started to take form in front of her, but the woman could not yet be seen behind the form.
“Why do you come?” She asked in a compassionate voice.
“Because it’s still inside me.” He answered in a dull monotone. “I feel numb. I couldn’t cry when she died, and I’ve felt nothing since. I can’t even remember anything about the funeral, it’s all buried so deep inside, and I can’t seem to get it out. I can’t live without her, she took all the love that I had. So I came here.” He started to explain, his eyes tracking over the sculpture growing in front of him. His hands twisted around the branches as to weave them into one another the create the form. “I was looking for a way to fill in the missing piece of me, to be like a normal person whose tears aren’t already frozen. I thought if I could make a statue of then I could revive her memory in my heart and cry.” He paused for a minute looking over the not yet complete statue.
“Why did you stop coming?” She forced the words out. Witnessing the artist of the statues, that she had admired for so long, was making her body seize up. She could only stand, eyes locked onto him and his hands.
“I couldn’t do it.” He said, as his hands resumed their work. “I don’t know why, but I could never capture her no matter how hard I tried. I was looking for her trough the statues but he just wasn’t there.” His words were spoken softly, and she could start to see the figure of a woman emerging from out of nothing behind the branches. The figure taking shape to her. His hands were were moving over its form, and she could feel them over her own. Her heart was beating so hard that she thought it could break through her chest. As the woman started to become more vivid her breathing deepened. She stood stunned unable to move behind him, watching his hands weave to last few branches into the sculpture. She felt them weaving through her, she looked at the face of the statue and saw a reflection of herself. Her heart skipped a beat and her breath was caught in her throat for a when she saw it. She exhaled and with the breath a shudder went all the way down her. He ran his hand over the completed mass of twisted branches, and she felt a tingle that followed after them. He turned and their eyes locked together. He was breathing heavily. A few seconds passed between them, before his breathing started to slow and calm so that he could form an end to the story.
“I stopped because I couldn’t find her, and I came to the services today as a futile last hope. I thought that maybe I could empathetically pick up on their mourning and that might trigger me to cry. But that didn’t seem to work either, I had to try something.” He spoke in words that hovered between a sigh and a whisper. She felt her heart wanting to leap out and hold him, but her arms didn’t follow that lead.
“Leave now.” She said. A look of confusion crossed his face, but she continued. “Go, and don’t come back for one month to the day. In one month I will see you again, and I can help you.” Not another word was spoke between them, it was through their eyes that he said he understood and they said good-bye to each other. He walked down the steps alone and down to the iron gates, pausing a moment to look back into the farthest corner of the graveyard. He turned again and walked through into the outside word. The sun was setting.
And Because Of That...
“Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust.”
They all stood in their circles marked by invisible lines, and she stood in the background. Her shovel was propped up beside he as she waited for the service to end so that she could fill in the soil. Her attention was not with the scene in front of her, the games that the mourners played was not the subject of her thoughts. Her mind wandered back to the the previous day when she had met the artist, and the mystery of the sculptress had been revealed. She waited with her thoughts as the people started to leave, and she walked over to fill in the grave of the last service of the day. As she moved the soil her memories of the previous day kept going though her mind, and of the tryst that she made. She was drawn to helping him, and she had a month to prepare her gift. She walked the line home between the stone trees. The darkness in her room was broken only by a single candle that etched warm flickering shadows across the wall. Carefully she laid the silk, velvet and Vermeer across her bed, with a gentle caress smoothing out the ripples in the cloth. She studied the pure white fabrics, and in her mind started to bring form out from behind them. Seeing how they would wrap around her, holding her tight and share the touch of her skin. She laid her hand gently onto material and started to cut up in a line. First struggling with the scissors for a few inches, before they took over guiding her hand in one soft glide. She took the steel to the rest of the fabric, The sharp edges glimmering in the warm light as they made their way across the form. She looked deep into the eye of the needle that she between her fingers, and with the other hand she held so delicately the tiny white thread. She paused for a second as the thread touched the cold metal, then she pulled it through the eye. She bound her soul to the needle and thread as she first tired them together. She wove herself through the silk as the needle pierced it once and was pulled through. Every stitch in and out she held him in her heart, and every stitch was a kiss to him.
Every day she walked in the light around her garden, for filling her duty to the people who came and listened to the man in white speak. After they all filled away she moved the soil around to bury the sleeper deep beneath the sun. She filled the days with her work, then she came alive at night when she closed the door to the rising moon. She came home and placed more stitches across the patterning materials. Every night she shared the touch of the fabrics, which became the touch of his skin. Her heart swelled almost to breaking point as the dress started to take form. It had never held so much in all her life now that she was holding him. She was making the funeral gown that was missing from his memories, thinking maybe that he might be able to remember what his mind had buried so deep within him. Every night she had come home and added stitches to the dress, and on the twentieth night she tied off the final tread. The beautiful white statue of a maiden hung in front of her, tempting her to be the one that it held. Her heart was beating loudly in her chest, wanting to leap out and be held in the arms of the dress. She ran her fingers over every inch of it’s form, keeping at bay the desire to wear the thing that she had made for him to see. She slid the overalls off her shoulders and down to the ground. She stood there bare in front of the dress, before moving over to it and gliding her arms through its. Then let it fall around her, touched every inch of her skin as it glide down, the bottom hanging just above the floor. She felt his arms around her as she laid down for the night in the white dress. Her heart that was beating so loudly slowed as she closed her eyes and it softly followed her into sleep.
And So...
He walked through the gates for the first time in one month to the day. His heart had been dreaming of her of a month coupled with an emotion that he could not name. His eyes wandered over, and her saw it as her garden. He had looked over every inch of this place, but now he saw it as hers. He saw the word; love, that was used here more than any other place in the living world. He made his way up the stairs to the grave of his wife. To the place that they had made their tryst, thinking of the few moments that they had shared. His heart sunk a little when he didn’t find her there, so he waited, not knowing where else that he could find her. From here he could look over the entire garden, and his eyes tracked over the stone trees looking for her. In another small corner her saw a lone man in white standing over a grave reading from a book. He made his way back down the stairs knowing that she would be there to fill in the soil over the coffin. The man didn’t notice him as he approached, his pace slowing as he drew nearer to the open wooden box. He felt a stab in his heart when he saw without a doubt the face of the body that lay in the coffin. He saw her lying in an eternal slumber wearing a beautiful white wedding dress. There was something warm forming behind his eyes as he looked into hers, that were closed now.
“I’ve come to sit beside you.” He said. The tears like fire burnt their way down his cheeks. He stood without time in an invisible circle with her. His mind released the hold it had on his memories and his heart. He held her in his heart, she was ready to leave her garden with him. The last words came from the man in the white robes before he left the stage.
“Ashes to ashes.
Dust to dust.”
And They All Lived Happily Ever After...
The End.
