She held the box in her hand
uncovering the blue velvet cloth
protecting the love inside
the polished mahogany.
Feeling the sadness
of her poised remembrance
I watched her caress
the urn containing her dream,
held tenderly in disbelief
while the vows of affection echoed
in love’s story staged within her elegy of tears.
Three months before, on a blissful wedding day
He held her hands
in his heart,
her adoration in his voice
her essence in his thoughts.
But now
she stood
alone
holding vain dreams
while her family watched in pain along the memorial wall of pictures a short distance away.
She took the flag, folded in a triangle star field of blue
and placed the box,
rewrapped in its velvet sleeve,
gently in the hands of a grief counselor.
She decided not to take the urn but
to wait.
To linger, yearning.
Perhaps by chance
to retrieve
his body
so that she might have something to possess
besides memories interred
in a wedding album.
To wait
through the continuing search for loved ones
lost on a September
Tuesday mourning.
Her pain,
etched in the wrinkles of her quivering lips
a startling contrast to the tautly folded American flag clutched within her arms.
She walked away
embraced by
her husband’s voice
chambered in the droplets of her tears
“I do!
I do, till death....
till death parts us!”
Till death
on a Tuesday mourning
separated them from sight,
yet united them in
memories
of her plaintive heart.
A heart holding years that should have been.
Now sackcloth moments
once lived
effusively in ninety days.
In her pensive walk
I discovered that
love survives.
Perennial beyond the expression
I do!
Beyond the
I do til death...
Love
lasts until
the
beating of the heart, of the one holding its
cherished fragrance,
beats no more.
“I just wanted to embrace the urn,” she told me.
An urn filled with dust from crushed towers.
She left the urn, sauntered away
choosing to bear only an encumbered heart.
Not burdensome with heartache,
but solemn with the pledge
to adore each other
forever -
through a lifetime
of
Tuesday Mournings.