Trapped between reality and fantasy | Love Reaffirmed by Christina OW #womensfiction #interracial

William loses his wife Kristy in a car accident. Plagued with sorrow and pain, for a few months he believes she’s still alive. Trapped between reality and fantasy, he’s the only one who doesn’t realize it. Kristy, unable to watch her love suffer alone, comes back to him. When he acts like she never left, she doesn’t bother to tell him she’s a ghost. Once William is forced to face that Kristy is truly dead, he breaks down and goes on a destructive path. Afraid that he might actually succeed in killing himself, Kristy must come up with a solution to keep him sane. . .and alive.

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Chapter One

The church bells rang loud, filling the cold quiet dead air. It was a suitable sound track for what was happening. The scenery also looked set- specially constructed, with purple flowers scattered on the ground complimenting the green grass- just for this moment. This perfect heart wrenching, dream crushing unbearable torturous moment. It was the first scene of my new forever lonely empty life and the last scene before the credits rolled, of our perfect loving short life.

I’ve always wondered how it felt like to lose someone close to you- a friend, a family member or a loved one- but now I know. I know the pain so well sometimes it feels like an extra limb.

A limb attached to my heart. Its sole purpose is to crush, shred and rip apart my heart over and over again like a wild animal devouring a poor helpless prey just at the thought of her; or when I feel her empty side of our matrimonial bed, or when I walk around our apartment expecting to hear her laugh echo and bounce off the walls making our home warm- a home that was now empty and hollow.

Yes, empty and hollow because you aren’t here to fill it, my love. Every essence of you made our home full and warm, but now it was cold and empty- like me.

Who would have figured it, me empty, cold and hollow after so many years of happiness? Our happiness was in such abundance it should have lasted forever... right?

No, not really. Never because I can’t feel it now, not even a little bit.

Maybe it’s because you aren’t here... definitely because you aren’t here. What other explanation could there be?

Well it should have. After you were taken from me, the least it could have done was leave me our happiness to go along with our memories. I should remember you and feel happy, not an aching sadness! I deserve that much!

Damn you death!

I’ve felt the wretched hand of death before. When my dad died I felt its impact, but I don’t remember it being like this- intense, malicious, tormenting and painful, amusing itself by making fun of me, at how vulnerable and impairing it had made me.

Someone should give it a taste of its own medicine, see how it likes it!

I looked around at the crowd surrounding the beautiful mahogany coffin. Everyone she loved, everyone who loved her, was here. They were all dressed in black crying as the priest said his prayers. They were sad, sadder than I have ever seen any one of them before. They were suffering a great loss. But she wouldn’t have wanted to see any of them cry over her death, but celebrate her life.

The thought drew a sigh out of me. My wife wouldn’t have liked this one bit.

When I suggested a party instead of a funeral, they all thought I’d lost my mind. My mother Gloria was so horrified she called a psychiatrist to come fix me. I knew it wasn’t only for my benefit- her English pride needed her son to be sane in front of all the people who would come to the funeral.

My wife’s brother Morris and sister, Sandra however agreed with me. They knew her- not as well as I did, but well enough to know what she’d want, and a depressing gloomy funeral wasn’t it. Gloria wasn’t going to let us have a party, so she took it upon herself to organize everything. It was a classy dignified funeral; she even gave out instructions on how our family was to dress.

I chuckled, knowing how much of a fight my wife would have put up against my mother and the high class funeral she had organized.

Mother moved to stand next to me. She looped her hand on my pocketed arm. She looked up at me, her eyes red and wet, her cheeks stained with tears. She must have seen me laugh- wrong move. I held back a sigh. Now she was going to be my constant unshakeable companion.

They brought a basket full of lilies to me- her favorite type flowers. I looked at the person holding it. His face was glum, patiently waiting for me to take one. Mother nudged me, pulling my hand out of my pocket. I reached out and took one, then moved forward and laid it on the coffin. I lingered over it for a while, imaging how small it could have felt for her being inside it. She hated the dark and even more so, small spaces.

A shudder rushed through me. It was a good thing she wasn’t inside it.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Morris. He placed his purple lily on the coffin. Sandra came next. She placed a white one, then leaned over it and kissed the coffin before she moved back and stood next to me. Her eyes were red, but she wasn’t crying anymore, she had a smile on her face. She moved to stand between Morris and me, and then tip toed so she could reach our ears.

“Will, if your mother finds out she’s not inside there, she’ll kill us and cram all three of our bodies in it!”

“You know she would have haunted us if we put her in a box. I’d rather face an angry Gloria.” Morris said with a chuckle, but the sadness at the edge of it was very evident.

“She’s still going to haunt us for letting mother throw her an uptight funeral.” I whispered as someone came forward and placed a lily on her coffin.

My wife was a free spirit, she hated confinement and rules. She was an earth lover, an environmental activist. That’s why we cremated her and spread her ashes in the sea. It was hard for me to see her reduced to specs of dust, but there was no better way. She would keep being a free spirit- roam the world as the wind carried her.

She loved helping people- that’s why I donated all her organs. She would still help them even in her death. I remember the day she gave me the organ donor forms to fill out. She shrugged her tiny shoulder and said, “Why burry parts that could help a person in dire need of them. As much as we don’t like it, we are all spare parts to someone else’s body.”

Well, in a way, she is still alive, inside other people, her body was still alive. If only it was possible for me to share my body with her soul. I would live inside my head to be with her and forget the outside world.

My wife was the type to chain herself to a tree or break into a cosmetic lab and free all the animals. She went by the motto ‘do unto the environment and animals as you would do unto yourself’. I became a vegetarian because of that- but I always stuffed myself silly with burgers when she was on one of her long protesting gigs.

When we got engaged, I opened an account in her name for bail money that the bank was instructed to pay immediately if she wound up arrested. I wanted her to be taken care of when I was abroad on business or visiting my mother in England. The thought of her spending a night in jail always gave me the chills. She thought it was the most romantic wedding present she ever got- I scored some serious points there.

We had been married for three years before this happened. Before someone, decided to take her away from me out of sheer selfishness.

“Will you please step back, you’re hovering!”

We jumped at Gloria’s scolding voice. She was really going to run this funeral by the script. We moved back a few feet, but still stood close to each other.

I watched as they lowered the coffin into the dark hole, and got a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was happier now that she wasn’t in it. Sandra grabbed my hand and held it tight. I looked at her. She was staring at it, pain in her eyes. Her breaths sounded short, strained. Morris wrapped an arm around her shoulders and held her tight against him. I could see he was trying to be strong for both of them, but the loss of his youngest sister was taking a toll on him too.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...” the priest went on with his prayers when the coffin hit the ground with a thud. The resonating thudding sound tied my insides in knots.

The same man, who previously held a basket of lilies, stepped forward with a shovel full of red dirt in his hands. He held it in front of me and waited. I took a pinch of it then he moved to Sandra, and then Morris. The two of them moved forward and poured the sand into the hole.

I stood there frozen. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew she wasn’t in there... but this felt too real, too final. She was dead and never coming back. My chest tightened, all the fears of never seeing or touching her again flooded back drowning me with all the moments we would never share again.

Why did she have to die? Why not me? How could I be here and she wasn’t, this wasn’t how we planned to spend the rest of our lives!

“Will...” I turned to see Sandra look up at me, “it’s okay she isn’t in there,” she whispered.

I nodded. She was right my wife wasn’t in there so this shouldn’t be so difficult. I took a staggering step forward and faced the dark hole. I raised my hand over it. Forcing my fingers to relax, I let the red sand flow out of it.

A long line of people followed, pouring sand into the hole as they made their way back to their cars. This was their final goodbye before everything went back to normal in their lives. But for me it was the beginning of my slow long lonely death.

I looked down at the head stone and read the beautiful engraved marble. The phrase set in stone made more sense to me now. It felt like the words were not only curved in the rock but I could feel the pounding, chipping of my heart as the words were etched in it too.

Christina Lee James-Stanford

Loving daughter, sister, wife and humanitarian

Your shining light will forever be missed.