The first time my wife came to see me after our enforced separation I was more than a little surprised. It had been over a year now and to be quite honest I never thought that I would see her again, after what was a more than brutal parting of the ways.
I had taken the talk of our separation hard and my wife in her practical way had simply stated that this was the way it was, and I would just have to cope. There was nothing that I could do to change the situation and the professionals that she had consulted with had all agreed with her.
From when she first told me of her problem, it only took three terrible months for our thirty- seven years of marriage, to be cruelly terminated.
She left me.
She told me that I could keep the house and everything in it. She wanted nothing. Where she was going none of it was going to be of any use to her. She had already spoken to her financial advisors and this was how it was going to be. A fait accompli that I had no control over.
Although I put on a brave face in front of my wife and our friends I was absolutely devastated by the news.
The fact that all this happened in the run up to Christmas and all the stress associated with this time of year only increased the pressure, on my increasingly tenuous grip on the reality of the situation.
She finally departed just two weeks before Christmas day and only eight days before her sixtieth birthday. I was devastated.
After she finally left, I suffered mental torture, as I began to realise that this was forever and she would not be coming back to me. Ever.
I started to drink to dim the pain of the separation. This soon escalated from a glass or two of wine at night to help me sleep, to two bottles of whisky a day, which put me into a permanent haze until I passed out on the settee, woke up and started the cycle again.
At first my friends were sympathetic, well those who had kept in touch with me were. Many just stayed away completely. I couldn’t really blame them.
Work told me to take as long as I needed, but of course their patience ran thin when it became obvious that I was in no fit state to return to work. They eventually lost patience with me and terminated my contract.
I really didn’t care.
After nearly a year the house was a complete mess. No house- keeping had been done, no washing or cleaning and of course my health was starting to suffer.
Nothing mattered to me once she had left.
I had been on my own for over a year now with absolutely no contact from my wife.
I was alone on Christmas eve, apart from the by now obligatory bottle of Whisky. The only light in the house was from the smouldering embers spluttering in the fireplace. It was cold, dark, and miserable. Not the least bit Dickensian. It matched my mood perfectly.
My wife loved Christmas, so of course I had banished it from the house. I didn’t want anybody there, nothing for me to celebrate, no decorations, no food, no presents unless of course it was Whisky. There was never enough Whisky to dull the pain of missing her.
I was half way down my second bottle of the day, sat in the half light, listening to the wind howling around the house and feeling very morbid.
I was contemplating my future and not seeing one. I had found my old cut throat razor in a drawer and it now sat on the table next to me, half open, grinning with the promise of a final solution to my abject misery. If I could pluck up the courage to use it.
It wasn’t quite the tap, tap, tapping of Poe’s seductive raven, or indeed the rattling of Marley’s ghost and his chains, that brought me out of this stupor but the sight of my wife’s face pressed up against the window.
Her surprise appearance was enough to sober me up, at least sober enough for me to be reasonably coherent.
I waved for her to come on in.
She looked wonderful, the years seemed to have dropped off her and she was smiling that smile that I missed so much. She seemed to glow with an ephemeral light, quite angelic. I took her hand; she was freezing cold so I added some logs to the fire and pulled up a chair for her to sit on and warm herself.
We sat and talked for hours, right into Christmas day morning. I never dared to ask her what she was doing here, I was just pleased that she was here, with me, however brief her visit might be
I offered her a drink, but she said no she had stopped drinking and told me that I should stop too.
She told me that she had never stopped loving me and that she always would. She never wanted to leave me but time and circumstance had dictated that this was the way things were, and I should accept what had happened and move on with my life.
You still have a lot to offer, and more people depend on you and care for you than you know.
She told me that she couldn’t stay with me for long as she had to get back to her new home. She was sorry, but it was now Christmas day, and she simply had to go. She had just slipped out to see me, as it was Christmas eve and she had been told that I was coping badly with the separation and wanted to help me if she could.
She told me off for not coming to see her and said that I would be more than welcome to come up later as she was on her own, and that the separation had been hard on her also. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and said it was nice that we could sit and talk like we used to do, despite everything that had happened to us.
She then slipped away as quickly and as quietly as she had come in, leaving me to wonder if she had really been here at all.
I awoke on Christmas day morning, still in my chair but feeling refreshed, and at peace with myself for the first time since she had left me.
It had been good to talk to my wife again and to know that although we could not be together physically, she still loved me and always would.
I could still smell her perfume lingering after last nights’ visit and decided to take her up on her invitation and visit her today. Her favourite day of the year.
Christmas day.
It was a lovely crisp morning as I set off on the short walk to where she now resided. I had never been to see her; the pain of our forced separation had been too much for me to face. But she had made a great effort to visit me on Christmas eve to invite me over. I would not disappoint her.
I took the Christmas rose that she had planted in our garden, as a present for her. It seemed appropriate that it should be with her now.
It was beautiful and peaceful as I opened the gate and followed the winding path to her new, forever home.
I felt very emotional, as I approached, and didn’t quite know what I was going to say to her.
She was, of course, waiting for me.
“Merry Christmas darling.”
The only sound to be heard was of my tears falling as I planted the rose on her grave.
(c) 2023 P.J.
