Between the Living and the Dead

                                                                       

They flipped through the photo album like it was a holy book.

“I remember this phase,” he said. “You looked like death.”

“As did you,” she reminded him.

They laughed a lot and wept a little remembering the past. So many days wasted.

He turned the page.

“This is when the light came on in your eyes.”

She looked closely. It was. She could see it too.

He continued, “One day we were peas in a pod. The next day you were different.”

She nodded.

He was silent for quite some time, then asked, “Did I ever tell you about my dream?”

No. He hadn’t.

His voice cleared and he told it as if he’d been mulling it over for 34 years.

“You were in front of me, talking about something to do with your kitchen. Really. Just an ordinary day and ordinary words and a folded dish towel you put on the counter. It was sudden, but it wasn’t. Somehow in the dream I knew it wasn’t just you. It was this great cloud. You were gone. They were gone. I was standing alone in your kitchen looking at where you had been. I could see you in the sky, in a way, though you weren’t there either.”

She listened.

He went on, “You asked Jesus not to forget me.”

She was surprised, but not really.

“He didn’t forget me,” his voice cracked. “He froze everything. The sky. The people. You, even.”

“For how long?” She wanted details.

He smiled as he said, “Almost 80 years, the length of my lifetime. He waited for me.”

They wept as they remembered these things.