After Forever Ends
A novel
By
Melodie Ramone
Cover Photo by Cynthia Heim
Cynthia Joy Photography
Plymouth, Indiana
cynthiajphoto@gmail.com
Story edited by Sean Comer
Mesa, Arizona
seancomer@gmail.com
All contents copyright 2012 by Melodie Ramone. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
I Melt With You
Words and Music by Richard Ian Brown, Michael Francis Conroy, Robert James
Grey, Gary Frances McDowell and Stephen James Walker
Copyright © 1982 UNIVERSAL - MOMENTUM MUSIC LTD.
All Rights in the U.S. and Canada Controlled and Administered by
UNIVERSAL - POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC.
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
For my children, who believe in elves.
For my husband, who dared me to write a love story.
For Randall, who’s whispered secrets to me all my life.
And for everyone who was ever brave and lucky enough to have
loved somebody with their whole heart, and, to have had somebody
brave and lucky enough to love them back.
CHAPTER ONE
“Gran?”
I can hear Kitty’s voice from the back of the house, but I am not going to answer her. I am sitting on my chair in her garden trying desperately to hear a natural noise, something other than the dim hum of a freight train from several blocks away. All I hear at her cottage are air planes, freight trains, auto-mobiles, motorcycles and lawn mowers. All day long. They hurt my head. It makes me wish I had been blessed with the deafness that Alexander has acquired over the last few years.
It’s nothing against Kitty. Kitty is my favourite grandchild. I’ve never made too much of a secret of it. She and I have been a duo since the day she was born and it was more than generous for her to invite me to stay while I mended from my surgery. When Alexander and Lucy couldn’t handle me anymore, Kitty was the only choice to take me on. I was hell to deal with when I first arrived, but the Scottish blood I passed on to her runs strong in her veins and she dished my unpleasantness right back at me. I would reckon not too many could go toe to toe with her and survive, which is why, because of my age, I surrendered and stopped bickering. It wasn’t easy. Nothing bothers me more in this world than a person who behaves as a sheep and not as a dragon.
I love Kitty to bits. I don’t suppose that her home would be in a place of my choice, being as I was not consulted when she and her husband purchased it, so I shouldn’t complain about the noise. No, Kitty is not my problem and neither is her house. My problem is that I am homesick. I miss my little house in Wales where the only sounds are the chumming of the stream that leads to the lake, the tweeting of the birds and an occasional owl at night. So different it was there from everything here in England. I haven’t lived in a city since I was fifteen years old. I’m out of practice with the noise.
It does get quiet here at night, though it’s an eerie sort of quiet. It’s as if everyone in the world has gone away and left on the lights. The back garden is the darkest spot I can find. I can’t see the stars for the illumination of street lamps, but I often slip back there and watch the bats dart past the lights. Swift, silent and graceful, they remind me of myself as a girl. Darkness gives them the chance to finish their business and live their lives without interference from those that misunderstand them. In that way, they are more like Oliver.
My Oliver. He was my best friend. He was my husband and my whole life. I’d give anything to spend one more minute with him, to feel his arms around me or listen to his heart beat inside his chest. But he crossed the veil last summer. I was never lonely a minute in my life before he went away. And although his memory keeps me company, sometimes his absence wakes me up in the night. I’m eighty six years old now and I cry just like I did when I was separated from Oliver at Bennington those two weeks after we returned from the cabin. I may be an old lady, but in my heart I am still just Oliver’s girl.
I do have a trick, though, that keeps me from doing something stupid while he‘s away. It’s really very simple and I learned it in the wood. If I sit quiet and I think about him hard enough, concentrate long enough, I can see him anyway I want, at any point in time that I can remember him. It’s like watching a film almost, but it comes in flashes. Thank heavens I have a lifetime of memories. The one I love the best of Oliver is the tall, dark haired lad with the contagious grin that I fell in love with. I watch him with his twin brother and their friends playing football on the grounds of Bennington. I listen and I can hear their laughter gliding along the breeze. Oliver is yelling, “Foul! Foul!” and Merlyn Pierce is jumping on to his back, trying to pull him to the ground. Instead of going down, Ollie spins and jerks poor Merlyn until he falls off. Two years later, I hear Oliver whisper, “I love you, Sil.” I can see his hands around my middle and feel his chin resting on my shoulder as we watch the sun set over the lake at school. We were still students at Bennington, so very young. Yet still, I love him just as much when he is that old man standing in the doorway of the home we built together, always with that grin, telling me I am as beautiful as I was the day he met me. Seconds later he is confessing that he has only weeks to live.
“Now, Sil,” He tells me, “I need you to be strong through this. We’ll get through it together like we always have. I’ll love you still even more after I’m gone. That’s part of the magic.”
“Oliver!” I whisper out loud, suddenly coming back into the present. I often talk to him when I think no one is listening. I think he can hear me better when we’re alone, “I did something last night. You’ll laugh. After my bath I looked at myself in the long mirror. It was hysterically funny, Sweetheart. You would not believe how old I am! I’m a shrivelled, saggy, silver haired old lady. You’d never know I’d once been a curvy red headed bombshell with boobs no one could believe!” I chuckle, pulling my fingers through my hair, “Carolena talked me into letting her cut off my hair. I don’t know why I let her do it, except it was always in knots and I have trouble sometimes holding the brush. It’s at my shoulders now, curlier than ever. It’s not the same. I wonder if you still think I’m beautiful,” Tears spring to my eyes, “I miss you, Ollie. I miss you more than you can imagine. I miss you more every single day. I know you’re inside my heart, but…”
I pause for a moment, waiting to hear from Kitty again, but her voice does not come, “Anyway, listen to me, I walked right up to that mirror and I looked at myself closely. I’ve lost a ton of weight. The skin on my face is loose, so is the skin on my neck. I have loose skin everywhere, really. I look like a turkey, I swear it. I don’t look so good and my eyes… they’ve faded. They used to be so blue they’d catch people off their guard, but now they’ve tamed down to a sort of grey,” I sigh, wiping my tears away with the back of my hand. “I’m tired, Sweetheart. I want to go home. I’m inclined to lose my faith. Oh, Oliver, I don’t want to be here anymore! If I can’t go home I thought maybe if I told you, you’d come and get me. So…”