Tragic Love

A little old woman looked up and down the street, waiting for a car to stop so she could pass. She couldn't see very well, since she was old and her eyes had dimmed, and she was holding a very large and very heavy paper bag.

A young woman, no more than twenty, walked up behind her and hit the 'Walk' button. She looked down at the little old lady as she waited to cross, and her heart went out to the old woman for some unknown reason.

"Let me help you with your bag." She said, and the young woman took the heavy bag from the older one. Together they crossed the street. On the other side the old woman stopped.

"I can take my bag now; I don't want to be a burden." She said in her raspy old voice.

The young woman shook her head. "No, its okay. I can carry it for you." She said. She knew she had to be at a meeting in twenty minutes, but she felt that if she gave the bag back and left the old woman, she would miss something important.

The pair walked along the sidewalk in silence for a time. They made a startling contrast to each other. The old woman was small and wrinkled and pale, while the younger was tall with a rich tan and dark long hair.

"Would you mind if I tell you a story?" The old woman asked as they walked along.

"Please do." The younger woman urged. She wanted to hear what this old woman had to say.

"When I was a young girl, around your age, I met the most wonderful person in the entire world." She began.

"Your husband?" The younger woman asked. The old lady shook her head and laughed.

"Heavens no! The person I'm referring to wasn't a man. She was a woman, and her name was Delilah. She was the sweetest little thing. We fell in love real easily." The old woman said.

The young woman frowned. She wasn't sure if she wanted to hear the rest of the story. She wasn't homophobic, but she really didn’t like to hear about lesbian or gay relationships. But something stopped her from interrupting the woman.

"Delilah and I got along great. We became the best of friends, and it seemed only natural that out little hugs lasted longer and longer, and that our chaste kisses on the cheek moved to passionate kisses on the mouth. We were in love. But of course, homosexuals were even more scorned then than now. It was awful." The old woman said.

They made a turn and the younger woman realized they were heading toward the cemetery. She wondered if the old woman was lost, or lived past it in one of the new apartment complexes.

"Delilah and I wanted a child. We couldn't marry of course, but we liked to think we were married, no rings needed. But we could never have children together, and that upset her more than me. But we couldn't bear the thought of finding a man to 'do the job'. So Delilah went childless." She said. They were walking up to the cemetery now, and the young woman frowned. There was another gate at the end, but it took longer than going around.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" She asked earnestly.

The white head nodded. "Yes. Now, as I was saying. Since we couldn't have children, we adopted a puppy. Delilah loved him. We would joke that he was our baby boy. But we had to be careful about it, just as we had to be careful about being too close where others could see us." They entered the old iron gate into the cemetery.

"Charlie, that was the dog, got hit one day. Never found out if it was an accident or on purpose. But when Delilah found out, she came to me crying and wailing. She found me in the street, coming home from shopping, and hugged me like I was her saving her grace. I kissed her and comforted her and spirited her home, never giving a thought to all the folks that had seen us hugging and kissing and cooing." The two women now turned down a side path in the cemetery.

"I should have known better than to ignore the people that had come around asking about her health after that. I should have, but I didn't. And maybe because of that and the scene on the street...Well, one night, Delilah didn't come home after working at the store. I stayed up all night and waited for her. By morning I was frantic and calling around to everyone we knew. No one had seen her." They turned down one more side lane, this one covered in grass and long-forgotten.

"Early in the morning her sister showed up and said that Delilah was dead. Hung from a tree and burned. She said I had to leave, change my name. So I did. I ran away to New York for a time, but I came back. I had to. No one ever found out what happened to my Delilah, who had done it. No one ever even looked into it. Her sisters are dead, and she's got no family to remember her. So it’s just me." The woman said, finishing as they stopped in front of a grave.

The other graves around it were worn and grown over, obviously poorly cared for. But the grave in front of the two women was neat and tidy, the stone younger looking. There were no flowers though. The simple inscription on the stone said Delilah Jones, the years she was alive, and the simple words 'Loved by many'.

The young woman put the bag down as the older one beckoned. The old lady pulled out a few potted plants. She set them up nicely around the grave.

"Delilah liked roses." She said softly, and the younger woman looked and saw that all the flowers were tiny roses. Her cell phone went off and she sighed.

"I really have to go. Talking to you was nice though." She said. The older woman nodded and stayed where she was. The younger one stood up and turned her phone off. She had a lot to think about.

As she walked back to the office building, she thought about her own fiancé. He was always so loving. She would hate to lose him so suddenly.

'But that wouldn’t happen, because society isn't against our kind of love.' She was filled with a sudden loathing of homophobic people. She shook her head as she thought of how much love was repressed by people's short sighted views. She sighed as she entered the office building she worked at, and silently vowed to never judge another person before getting to know them, no matter what they looked like, how they spoke, or who they loved.