Orchard

Story Awards

★★★★★

0

Ratings by readers

Forty years, they say. A lifetime.

It feels like a breath, and an eternity,

all held in the space his absence now occupies.

James.

Even his name, a solid, dependable sound,

now catches in my throat like a shard of glass.

The garden was our first language.

His hands, stained with earth, coaxing life from stubborn soil.

My joy, watching the improbable green of his tomatoes ripen under a summer sun

that seemed to shine only for us, only for that patch of earth we called ours.

He was the tree, yes, steadfast.

I was the vine, perhaps, clinging, always reaching for his light.

Now the tree is gone.

And the vine lies tangled on the cold ground,

its leaves brittle.

They talk of memories being a comfort.

Sometimes, they are.

The scent of his pipe tobacco, phantom-like in his old armchair.

The way his laughter rumbled, low and genuine,

shaking his shoulders when I’d recount some silly village gossip.

The weight of his hand on my back, a silent reassurance in a crowded room.

These are sparks in the encroaching dark.

But memory is a cruel archivist too.

It replays the tremor in his hand as he folded the newspaper that day in the orchard,

the first chill of fear, sharp and unwelcome.

It shows me the hollowing of his cheeks,

the dimming of that steady light in his eyes as illness took root.

It forces me to relive the sterile scent of hospital corridors,

the hushed, grave tones of doctors speaking a language of despair.

"Palliative." "Comfort."

Words that strip away all hope, leaving only the raw, brutal truth of ending.

Our bedroom, overlooking the apple trees he planted as a young man,

became a vigil.

His breath, a fragile thread I clung to,

each shallow rise and fall a small victory against the inevitable.

Our children, their faces mirroring my own grief,

grown adults suddenly looking like lost children themselves.

"You're stronger than you think, Eleanor," he whispered,

his voice a dry rustle of leaves.

Was I?

Or was my strength just a reflection of his,

borrowed light from a dying star?

January dawn. Cold, clear.

The world outside, indifferent in its frosted beauty.

His hand in mine, growing still.

The silence.

Oh, God, the silence.

Not a peaceful quiet, but a void, a roaring emptiness

where his life, our life, used to be.

A world snapped in two.

The rituals of grief are a blur.

Black clothes, sympathetic murmurs, the scent of lilies – too sweet, too funereal.

The children tried. Friends called.

But I was encased in a bubble of unreality,

watching myself move through the motions,

a stranger in my own skin.

The farmhouse is too large now, too quiet.

His boots still stand by the door.

His glasses on the bedside table.

Relics.

Each one a tiny, sharp pinprick to the heart.

I walk through these rooms, a ghost in my own home,

searching for echoes, for a trace of him that isn't just memory.

Spring came, an insult of blossoms on the trees he loved.

How dare the world renew itself when mine had ended?

"Time heals," they say.

A convenient lie for those who haven't had their roots ripped out.

Time dulls, perhaps.

It papers over the raw wound with a thin scar tissue

that tears with the slightest provocation –

a song on the radio, the way the light falls in the late afternoon,

the unexpected kindness of a stranger that reminds me of his gentle way.

I visit his grave. A cold stone under a yew tree.

I talk to him, my words swallowed by the wind.

What is there to say?

That I miss him more than words can hold?

That the world is muted, colours less vibrant without him to share them?

That sometimes, in the dead of night, I still reach for him,

and the emptiness beside me is a physical blow?

This is widowhood.

Not a gentle fading, but a constant, low ache.

A life sentence of missing.

The unfurling shadow he has left behind

is the landscape I now inhabit.

The sun still rises, yes.

But it shines on a world forever changed,

on a solitary vine,

its tendrils still searching,

for a warmth, a steadfastness,

that is no longer there.

Only the echo in the orchard remains.

And the long, lonely years ahead.