Tears cascaded down your face and splashed onto the recently placed headstone. It was your first Christmas without her, your first Christmas without any kind of joy or happiness. Looking down at the freshly turned soil your heart ached and burned with pain and longing. This wasn't how life was supposed to be, you two were meant grow old together, travel the world together, do everything... together. But instead some cruel twist of fate had led her six feet underneath but you had managed to survive, often wondering who came out worse.
The cemetery was practically empty, Christmas being the time for joy and family. Most people came, stood at a grave for a few minutes, maybe left a cheap bouquet of flowers and then left. You had been at the grave for a few hours now, reminiscing about your beloved, talking to somebody you didn't think could listen.
One other person stood across from you, in the distance and through the haze of the snowstorm you could make out a figure.
Bending down to replace the near-dead array of flowers that sat on her grave you stroked the name on the headstone. "I'll see you soon my love. Wait for me?"
The snow crunched and cracked under your feet as you made your way over to the figure. The tip of your nose had become numb and you looked down at your hands, the fingertips had turned blue. Cupping your hands and blowing into them you hoped to warm them up, at least in the slightest but to no avail.
The figure, was kneeling down at a grave, you walked behind him and took note of the name on the headstone, it read 'Theodosia Bartow Prevost'. You knelt crouched down beside the man.
"Christmas is always a hard time for missed loved ones isn't it?"
He turned his head to look at you, tears were streaming down his face and his eyes were bloodshot.
"Yeah."
"Who was she? Mother?"
"No, she is my..." he paused for just a moment "...was my wife."
"It's unfair, so many good people in the world are taken. So many pure... pure souls are ripped from us when there are people out there that get to keep on living, will never experience grief."
The man chuckled. "So naïve..." he stood up and brushed the snow off of his knees. "death doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints." Tears started rolling down his face at a faster rate and his face balled up. "it takes and it takes and it takes."
~*~
Written by Aaron.