A loving Memory

Dellas sat on the swinging bench on his porch glaring at the setting sun and smoking another cigarette down to the filter. He sat there for hours every night, watching the stars and the moon, reliving his last nights with her and feeling guilty that he was continuing his life after her death. However, tonight there were no stars or moon in sight and he could barely bring her happy face to mind anymore, only the dull un-smiling face that she wore with her favorite blue dress at her wake. He loved that dress; it made her eyes shine and enhanced her beauty from gorgeous to breath-taking. At the wake her hair was spread about her face and it reminded him of the first night they’d made love. She lay there afterwards with a huge smile on her face, wearing only sheets with her hair haphazardly spread around her face. That was the night he realized he loved her, and only a year after that they were married.

Just as he was about to get up and move into the house, to spend another sleepless night tossing and turning, Dellas heard a familiar noise. Some ones feet were shuffling around the corner and there was a familiar voice was humming along to “Love Me Tender” by Elvis in between the snapping noises they made with their gum. It was the same noise he used to hear every night as she came home from work she would shuffle her feet because she was too tired from doing price checks and telling customers that “that shirt just looks fabulous” on them, snap her gum in frustration from her crappy job and hum to cheer herself up. Dellas thought that he was just hallucinating, too little sleep and too much nicotine might do that, until she came around the corner.

He froze in shock and dropped the pack of butts in his hand, he knew it was impossible but he kept praying that she was back, that she was real, that she would stay. Just like the girl he fell in love with two years ago, she walked up to him kissed him on the cheek and made some dumb remark about him quitting as she skipped through the door. His mouth just dropped open and he followed her in. In awe he looked down at the flip flops she had kicked off at the door and the sweatshirt she had thrown over the arm of the couch. She was talking to Dellas but he just openly stared at her. When he didn’t respond she looked at him questioningly and then just kept talking. Something about a special night, the good wine and candles in a drawer some where. Dellas merely nodded his head and went to sit at the table.

Before he knew it, his deceased wife, was cooking him dinner and setting out the nice china and a table clothe with the little red flowers on it. The last time he had seen those, she had been setting them out for their first Christmas together. That was the year it snowed two feet. She had been so happy that winter, as the leapt through the snow banks, hitting each other with barely packed snowballs until she finally tackled him into one of the snow banks on their front lawn. He remembered them stuck in the mound of snow, wrestling and struggling to get up until they both admitted defeat and kissed in truece. She sat down at the table and started to talk to him when she finished, pulling him from his memories. When again he didn’t answer she reached out grabbed his hand.

“Dellas, what is the matter with you?”

“Nothing, nothing” he responded after a few seconds, “I just haven’t been sleeping lately, I’m tired and I have a head ache, I might be sick or something.”

Even to him self he sounded flustered, but she just gave him a funny look, smiled and continued her chattering.

They had a normal dinner after that, talking about her day at work and some lady who looked horrible in pink but bought six or seven pink shirts and kept asking how she good looked in them. He told her about how he had gone to work today but that it had been the same as usual and that the mechanic shop was as boring as ever. Dellas was just so confused, why she was here if she had died nearly six months ago and why was she talking as if nothing was wrong, as if he hadn’t lived in hell with out her for so long.

After dinner she got up and started to clear the table and Dellas helped. They stood together at the kitchen sink and she washed while he dried and put the dishes away. Every once in a while they would brush hands and it would remind him that this really was happening. When they had finished they walked to the living room and she pulled out an old copy of Cosmopolitan from under the coffee table, while he turned on the TV to flip through the channels. It was a ritual they had shared every night of their marriage. At random times she would comment on which star had gained weight or who had the best dress at the Oscars. On a few occasions, she even had him take some of those girly quizzes they have in the magazine, things like “How aggressive are you in bed?” or “What kind of martini are you?” He had always thought it was dumb but he went a long with it to humor her anyways.

After about an hour, she looked at the clock and yawned a little. Then she stood, moved behind him and started to massage his shoulders.

“Want to go to bed?” she whispered in his ear as she kissed his neck.

She had always done little cute things like that when she wanted to get some. Dellas stood up took her hand and led her to the bedroom. As soon as they stepped in she stopped and looked around, he knew it was messy and he had meant to clean it but just never got around to it. She shrugged her shoulders and he leaned in to kiss her. They made out standing for a while before they tripped/tumbled onto the bed. It was so similar to how they had been before that Dellas almost forgot she had died and that this was an impossible situation.

The couple played around for a little before it got serious and when they were finished, she smiled at him kissed him on the nose and cuddled up to his chest. Soon Dellas heard soft snores coming from her and he knew she was asleep. He took this time to think about this whole day. It had been normal at first, work sucked, lunch sucked, and when he got home he figured his night was going to suck too. He was still having trouble believing this all was happening so he lifted his hand to her bare shoulder and caressed the skin there. It felt the same as it had before, she kissed the same, she acted the same, this was his wife. After lying awake for several hours, Dellas finally drifted off to sleep.

When he awoke the next morning there was no one in bed with him. After searching the house and the yard, he still had no luck in locating his wife. He had a vague memory of her getting up in the middle of the night kissing him on the cheek and telling him to move on, but he had figured he was dreaming when it happened.

After that day, Dellas spent a week watching and waiting. One day in the market as he walked between the lines of refrigerators in the frozen food section, he swore he sae her. He was reaching down into on of the fridges and when he stood up, he saw her face in the frosted glass of the refrigerator door. After turning quickly and not seeing her he raced through the market. ‘She had a blue dress on, or was it green’ he thought to himself as he dodged between the surprised looking customers. Up ahead a woman was standing inline at the meat counter wearing a green dress. ‘That’s her’ he though but as he whipped her around by the shoulders he stared into the shocked face of a woman he didn’t know. That was the day he gave up looking.

Dellas called into work the next few days; he sat at the kitchen table, on the living room couch and in his bed hoping that she would walk in again. When she didn’t he went back to his old routines, work, smoke and try to sleep. But on one cloudy afternoon, he heard some one walking down the street, their flip flops shuffling down the walk way to his house. He looked up excitedly but found only a young woman standing in front of him. He went back to staring at the clouds and smoking his cigarettes until she walked up to the porch, she was pretty, he couldn’t deny that and she was just the type of girl he always had dated before he got married, tall and skinny with green eyes and dark brown hair. Immediately he got nervous, he had loved his wife, he shouldn’t be eyeing other women. She smiled at him and he noticed that her smile was a little crooked, similar to his wife’s. Dellas shook his head, this was such a bad thing to think, no one could compare to his wife. His mind raced nervously as she approached him and his erratic thoughts were cut short when she spoke.

“I have a flat, my car is right down the street, do you think I could use your phone?” she asked smiling at him.

Dellas waved his arm at her and said he would change it and they walked down the street together towards her car. As he walked, he swore he heard his wife’s voice, telling him it was time to move on, and at the moment the girl reached out her hand and introduced her self as Natalie.