She Waits

4 years ago

Ramya

@Ramya_98

She waits for him, she waits for years. Through the bright, sunny days and the cold, stormy nights alike, she waits. They tell her he was martyred, saving lives in a crucial war. He was an army doctor, his profession she would never be not proud of. Yet when they tell her his body could never be retrieved, that is what gives her heart the benefit of doubt. Is he lost, can he be found? Is he dead or is he not, she knows not.

She still sees his smiling face in that framed black and white photograph of his, she keeps atop the bedside table as she puts their daughter to sleep each evening. The smell of all his favourite books in the study, they still carry traces of him as her mind pays obeisance to his memories and his memories alone. For months, she has known nothing but pain, has felt nothing but sadness, has clung onto nothing but hope. Yes, hope, hope is what she clings to like a limping lad clings to his walking stick for support.

Maybe eventually, that walking stick of hers would crack and break and maybe that day at last, her longing soul would let her perform his last rites. She would weep and she would wail that day. Her wails, they would haunt the inmates of the small town she lives in for a lifetime. That is the day the heavens would agree that no one in the world has ever known a grief greater than hers. And it would agree too that no love in the world has ever been deeper than her love for him.