I was there when I saw her pass away. It was very peaceful, very dreamy. Very much like a dream. She had silk scarf around her head; she was always one for looking elegant, even though she barely had the energy to do so. Her eyes could not see anymore, but they were still the sea green that I remembered, the sea green I loved. She could hear me though; I saw the tiniest fraction of a smile, like the smile of a newborn, upon her lips, all that she could really do. I sat there, my hands interlaced in hers, just, enjoying her. Even though she was so close to death, she was still alive, and she was still mine and the world’s. Her thin chest still rose with every slow breath. Her eyes were still open, though she could only make out shadows and a few colors. But it was her fingers, see? Her beautiful, beautiful fingers, pale and small, smooth as china, that still had an ounce of courage left, an inch of strength left in them to squeeze my hand. Those hands that rode bikes, mounted horses, drew deliciously, turned the pages of piano sheet music and held children. Those hands that put the golden circlet that was on my ring finger, 20 years ago. I swear, her eyes were brighter than any words could say, not even the boldest poet or the loneliest playwright could paint out that shade of velvety ivory green, with blue specks in its peaks, and flecks of silver and sky intertwined in it, the light fell in just right, to make out the happiness in her soul, the bravery in her spirit, powers of her body. But most of all, the love in her heart. No one, not even life, could take that away from me. Though countless times I have tried to reproduce the shades and the colors of her eyes that day, I just could not. Musical notes couldn’t do much either. It was otherworldly. Too good for this world. The sparks, the shimmer, the shine, oh, how I would miss them.

I sat there in silence; she was too weak to speak. I had brought her favorite things; her grandmother’s necklace from when she was about her age, the age “when a young woman should be married”, made out of gold and diamonds with little strings of silver; her favorite dress, white as clouds with summer roses sketched in them. She looked so divine in it, and it always looked so fresh on her, she truly looked like a spring flower drained in morning rain, starting to open its petals out into the sun. The sun, the sun before all this, somehow it used to be so warm. Now every time I leave the sanctuary it seems to chilly out, how could this be? Please explain it to me. Why, why when she was with my son in her arms that day of his first birthday, when she had this exact same dress, and her hair was let down in waves that thickened all the way towards her waist, as if reaching for the earth, and with rubies on her ears, did the sun seem so unreasonably perfect, not too hot and not too clouded? She was a vision. And that smile, it made it all the better, it glowed, it shone, it danced teasingly around you and made your head go spinning. Her eyes smiled, her body smiled, the whole world smiled.

I brought her favorite books; The Hobbit, She, and Bliss, In a German Pension, the Doves Nest, Hamlet, A Winter’s Tale, Pride and Prejudice, collections by Virginia Woolf. And of course Homer and Aristotle, The Barchester Chronicles, Gulliver’s Travels, David Copperfield, and her dose of Shakespeare, William Blade, and Dante! This was just a few of them; I brought what I could obviously carry. Good heavens, she always loved to read, she would spend entire afternoons sitting in her suspended chair, immersed in a book, underneath the lush greens of our trees. There was a funny way that she would move around her mouth when she was puzzled at something, and she always had tears in her eyes when a character she loved dearly died during the tale. Lord, was I cruel! I would laugh at her playfully, though sometimes she took it as an offense. There was something funny, the way that she would get attached to the characters, talk to you in such vivid detail about them that it seemed you knew them. There was something funny? She was funny. That’s why I love her so much. She brought colors in my life that I never had known they existed, that most likely have never been imagined. I loved every second of it. I loved every second of her.

And I brought her family photo book, the thing that she held up above anything in the Universe, with pictures going as far back as her Great grandmother. She would linger at the photos of her grandmother; that one had been a blow to her. You could never, ever see a pair closer together; she loved her Gran to this very day. Ever since she was a teenager, she would comb the long silver hairs of her Granny’s mane, and braid them ever so neatly; and when Old Mrs. Smith could no longer walk or talk or eat by herself, there she was, the girl of my life, beside her Grandmother until the day when she died.

Some part of her heart went along with her Gran. I know it. I could feel it in the way she touched me, in the way she assured me that she would be alright, or how she would just stare at our tulips for long ages of time, saying how they reminded her of her Grandmother’s garden.

I had thought it so peculiar, those strange little gestures and acts-they always seemed the only part of her that was allowed of true expression. She had never cried in front of me, or told me how she grieved. I had never known how to grieve, until this had happened. What would life be now? How I wondered, infinitely wondered how, would she be ever more beautiful? Would we have had another child? Would she have written a book, would we have-

“Dear” said she, “would you open up the window for me?”

I got up without hesitation; something inside me was desperate, something in my chest, that feeling that makes your heart seem like a cave and destroys your stomach to bits. The white linen curtains, soft as daisies, were cleared out of view. It was mid afternoon, and the sun was weary, tired, expired, just like the shades of greens on the trees, or the strained look on the petunias; motor engines were heard from afar, and the sky was a dangerously clear blue, with a crisp moon edging out of the peaks, trying to fit in. She seemed to mock him, for some reason, the only beacon of fresh in such a land worn down to the core. And in the horizon was the sea, the lovely edging sea, but even it seemed tired, far too old for these despaired and troubled times, yet moving around like a young girl, trying to hold on to precious minutes before the end of a ball. The last beams of sun played with it endlessly, giving diamonds and stealing them away yet again on the water’s surface. In the streets I could see beautiful orange trees, bright as colored stars among the ruckus of our cement stone, slender and willowy like a woman’s figure. On those same streets we used to munch on Mrs. Knight’s famous scones, and would drink green tea on cafés, and go endless private balls where everything was bright and glowing and full of light, oh how I miss those days! How I miss them so, those summer months, soaking myself wet in lakes, walking around town and drifting through the depths of the ocean line on my father’s sailboat, with her clinging onto my arms, wind in her hairs and the sea in her mouth. That warm mouth, those warm eyes, and her pink cheeks-

Her smile, and her funniness, and slenderness, and her fire and warmth, the arms of a lover, the eyes of a singer, the heart of a cave of troves, and I got lost in it, and I would never find my way back, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay there forever, among her riches, there with her forever.

“I love you Michael. Don’t ever forget it.”

I clung to her hand when she died. She was very peaceful, very pale, like a lotus, like an aloe, like the moon. It was the eves of twilight when she died, with God’s jewels framed on the horizon, an absolutely breathtaking sight, as if all the world was saying their last goodbyes before she went away. All the weariness of the afternoon was washed away with the evening tide, the moon now waxing in her might, the stars aligning themselves in position, getting ready to look into restaurants full of pretty people and candle light, and to hear lonely guitars and romantic voices, and every window was alight like tiny lanterns, where couples would fight and kiss, children would laugh and dream, old marriages would eat and sleep side by side to the sound of waves.

She took a great breath, serene, and I took one more look on that beloved face, bathed in the glow of the late sun; those seas of eyes and that sun of a smile. The love of my life, the mother of my child, my portal to happiness, the key to my joy. The love, the mother, the portal and the key that would go away forever.

There was no light turned on. I didn’t bother to light any.

Don’t go.

Please, don’t. Stay, dear, won’t you stay, stay?-

“I love you Michael.”

I was there when I saw her pass away.