I know that sound. How I know it. Shovels.
How long has it been? No time here. No moving on. Restless for a wish—nothing more since that moment. The shot of pain across my chest. The blinding white. The unfathomable black. And this hole here. And the clods coming down. The sound of shovelling.
I listened as they laid me here against my wishes. How arrogant—to keep me apart from her in death as they tried to do in life.
Such a family. So much hate. So much greed. So much misplaced pride. And I the eldest son. The inheritor. The disappointment. All because I loved a woman not of their choosing.
Eliza-Jane. She sacrificed so much for half a life. Time shared in moments slotted between our isolation.
Is it my family now, digging. Squabbling over my bones?
Or could it be you, Georgia?
Our greatest hope, my dear. Our little one. Our joy together. For in those desperate minutes when Eliza-Jane knew you she loved you for a lifetime. Joy and sadness. And the hate of the family who would try to reject you.
Is it you my darling? Finally to defeat them? Come to restore me? To have me be, at last, together with your mother forever?
2011—Richard Holt / small stories about love (smallstoriesaboutlove.wordpress.com)
small stories about love 