Read Love is a Wounded Soldier Online
Authors: Blaine Reimer
Love is a Wounded Soldier (46 page)
“Dada, dada, mama!” Joshua babbled
excitedly.
“Yes, with Daddy and Mama,” Lizzie agreed.
“How was your sleep?” Maggie asked me.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I admitted. “Too many
things to think about, I guess.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s a big step,” she
agreed. “It’s exciting, but a little scary.”
I nodded thoughtfully. It was feeling more
scary than exciting at the moment.
“Oh, well, we’ve been there before, haven’t
we?” she reminded me brightly.
“I guess we have,” I smiled reluctantly.
We ate breakfast and prepared to leave.
Most of the few belongings we were taking with us had been packed the night
before, so there was little more to do than gather up the few remaining things
and do some cleaning.
We settled the children in the car, and I
was about to get in, when I stopped.
“I’m going to go make sure we didn’t miss
anything,” I told Maggie. “I’ll be right back.” I went back into the house and
slowly went room to room, looking for missed items, turning off lights, but
mostly, reflecting on each room as I went through it. I wondered why I had
wanted to leave it so badly. When I was done, I locked the door behind me and
placed the key on a nail above the door as I’d promised Eric Matthews I would.
I fought tears as we drove away. I hadn’t
expected it to be that hard. Maggie sat silently beside me, gently stroking my
hand with her fingertips.
Before we were on our way there was one
more stop I felt I needed to make. Until that morning, I’d had no intention of
making it, but now, I felt as though it wouldn’t be right to continue on
without it.
Maggie didn’t say anything as we pulled up
to the cemetery beside the church. She hadn’t asked what the flowers on the
seat were for, either, and so I think she probably knew. I stopped the car and
shut it off.
“What are we doing?” Lizzie asked from the
back seat.
“Hush!” Maggie told her.
I picked up the flowers and hesitated a
moment, wanting to say something, but I couldn’t get the words past the lump in
my throat. I cleared my throat, got out alone, and walked through the
graveyard, toward the headstone I knew marked Ma’s grave.
“Hello, Ma,” I said quietly as I laid some
wildflowers on her grave. I stood back and looked down at the gently sloping
grassy mound that covered my ma, and thought about her life.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around in a
while. I—I’ve had a lot of things happen in my life. But I guess you probably
know that, don’t you?” It felt strange to be talking to the dead, but it would
have felt wrong not to.
“It’s been a long time since I picked you
some wildflowers, so I thought I would drop by and leave you some. I know how
you like them,” I continued. I shoved my hands into my pockets and studied the
gravestone. “Safe in the arms of Jesus” it read.
“I love you, Ma,” I said, wiping my eyes.
“Good-bye.”
I stood for another moment in respectful
silence and turned away. My heart pounded and my knees almost shook as I walked
toward the part of the cemetery occupied by more recent graves. I had never
visited Ellen’s grave, and doing so filled me with sadness, and fear, and the
fear of sadness.
There were two graves beside each other
with new grass growing on them, and so I walked toward them. I stopped and
looked at the first headstone.
Ellen Marie (Moore) Mattox
May 16, 1922 - May 16, 1946
And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes - Rev. 21:4
The inscription blurred as I read it, and I
began sobbing uncontrollably. Sorrow depleted my body’s strength, and the
wildflowers I held in my hand dropped to the ground. I held my hand over my
mouth to muffle sobs I didn’t want my family to hear, and vainly tried to stop
my body from shaking.
Until then, I had grieved, but I hadn’t
felt what I was feeling then, this overwhelming sense that I’d experienced the
loss of something so beautiful and precious. I wasn’t just mourning the death
of Ellen, or the way she’d died, but I was mourning the death of our love,
grieving for the demise of a life we’d had that had slipped away from us.
When I had cried my wells of sorrow dry, I
picked up the wildflowers and knelt beside her grave.
“Until we walk hand in hand again,
darling,” I whispered, and gently placed the flowers on her grave. I stood up,
intending to leave, but it felt as though something bound me to that spot.
Leaving felt so hard. I had thought I could leave everything behind like the
bad memory that it was, but now I realized how difficult saying good-bye really
was. As I stood there, I felt like I didn’t want to leave Coon Hollow, or the
homestead, or even the gravesite before me. In my grief-stricken state, I
thought it would have been better if my life had also ended on May 16, 1946. I
couldn’t muster the desire to turn around and walk back to the car, and so I
stood there, limply, staring down at her grave, feeling so empty inside.
“Robert, the children are getting
restless,” I heard Maggie’s quiet voice behind me.
As I stood there like a statue, I felt her
arms wrap tightly around me from behind. We stood together in silence. I knew I
should go, but I just wasn’t ready.
“Let the dead bury their dead, sweetheart,”
Maggie whispered softly behind my ear. “Your life is with the living.”
Her words rang true. I felt like a disgrace
as a husband, ashamed that I’d become so overwhelmed with past grief that I’d
forgotten the love of the woman who held me. I turned, and we embraced
fiercely. Tears filled my eyes as I lay my head on her shoulder.
“I love you so much,” I whispered. She
kissed me on the cheek, and turned and looked down at the grave before us. I
pulled her against me, clasping my hands over the tight roundness of her belly,
and felt the flutter of life inside her. My sadness fled, and I felt a sense of
hope and an excitement for the promise of the future.
I looked toward the road that wound its way
up and out of the valley, the road that we were about to travel. It wasn’t just
the road away from things I wanted to leave behind, anymore. It was the road to
a new life and deeper love. It was the road that would take us to new
opportunities and possibilities. It was the road to anywhere.
Maggie gently pushed my arms from around
her and silently began walking back to the car, as if allowing me to say
good-bye alone. I stood there a moment, but my desire to linger by the grave
had vanished. There was nothing more to do or say. I leaned over, picked up the
wildflowers, and began to follow her.
“Maggie!” I called out. She was nearly to
the car, and didn’t hear me.
“Darling!” I shouted as I sprinted toward
her. She heard me now, and turned toward me as I ran up to her, holding out the
wildflowers.
“These are for you.”
THE END
Thank you
for reading my book! I hope it made you feel something.
I have striven to make this book exemplary
in every respect. While I think I have created a product that is equal to
anything produced by a large multinational publishing house, when it comes to
promoting it, I obviously can’t compete with their marketing dollars. But I am
convinced I can not only play their game, I can beat them at it. I just need
you to help me.
If you enjoyed
Love is a Wounded Soldier
,
please take two minutes and write a review on Amazon.com. If you’re feeling
particularly generous, also post your review to sites like
Goodreads
,
Shelfari
, and
Library Thing
. Your review doesn’t need
to be eloquent or exhaustive, it just needs to be there. Reviews are how books
get noticed online, and without reviews even the most compelling literary
masterpiece will likely remain buried in obscurity beneath a heap of a million
books of lesser merit.
Also, please tell a friend about it. Or ten
friends. Tell all your Facebook and Google+ friends, Twitter followers, blog
readers—you get the idea. It only takes a moment, but a simple word-of-mouth
recommendation that you give to people who know and trust you will give this
book publicity and credibility I couldn’t buy even with a massive marketing
budget.
I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I’ve
worked in a factory that made books, driven truck, worked in the oilfield, a
foundry, a warehouse, hog barns, and construction. I’ve even been a Sandwich
Artist! Thank you in advance for helping me add “successful author” to that
list.
Till we walk ha
Regards,
Blaine
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