Forget Me Not

[:::: Authors Note ::::]

This is a short one and one of my first tries to write poetry outside of the Red Suit. It doesn't come naturally to me. So sorry if the words don't rhyme like they should.

This is a short one that I am working on while I complete The White Suit, Book 2 of The Dark Christmas Saga and polish a new story, 'Pain'.

[:::: Forget me not ::::]

My tears stained the page again, joining the ones I had shed the previous two times I had read the letter from my wife of twenty years, Barbara. Standing across from me was the oldest of my three children, Gwen, at twenty-two. She also had tears running down her face.

"I can't..." I started to say, stopped, and turned to walk away. However, before I could take even ten steps, Gwen's arms wrapped around me.

"Daddy, we're not letting you get away again."

I just stood there, stoic and motionless, my face devoid of all emotion but the tears that continued to fall, my wife's letter still in my hands.

Eighteen months ago, I separated from Barbara when I called out the burgeoning affair she was having with a co-worker. She denied it, so I threw printouts I had taken from her phone of text messages and photos the two were sharing. Still, she denied anything physical had occurred.

I stormed out, and we had not spoken since, with the kids acting as our intermediaries.

I wanted to divorce her, and had spoken to lawyers, so I knew what would happen if either of us decided we wanted out. I didn't care about the money side. What I cared about and hated was that I still loved her.

The kids knew this and had been working on me, as my anger had begun to subside over the past few months. I knew I should have spoken to her by now, however, I still hadn't taken that step. Was it pride getting in my way? I didn't know.

Gwen knew her long-term boyfriend was about to propose, but she hoped that Barbara and I could at least talk by the time they got engaged, giving us a reason to reconcile.

I wasn't sure how we could reconnect. But from what the kids told me, she lived like a nun and always asked after me.

I believed I was ready, but then, before I could do anything, this afternoon, Gwen turned up with the letter in her hand, sobbing. Handing it to me as I frowned, I opened it immediately and started reading:

"Stanley, my one and dearest love.

I have written and rewritten this letter so many times over the past year, trying to figure out how to say that I am sorry, to tell you of my regret and how much I have hurt you. You were right, there was something there that should not have been. I did things that did not honour you, even if nothing physical happened. I hurt you, and it is a pain deep inside me that I can't ease without healing you, and I am stuck."

I read through the rest of the page; however, moving to the next page, I could see that it was fresh and new, the handwriting still in my wife's distinctive style but sloppy and rushed.

"There was more I wanted to explain, but I have removed it. Something has happened, and I am not long for this world. Earlier today, my car was run into by a drunk driver and the internal injuries I have mean that I will likely not last the night. But I am awake and can pen this last letter to you. I will give it to Gwen, and she will give it to you when she arrives at your place.

The pain is growing despite the medication they have me on, but I believe I have the words to express myself now. I pray this helps you."

She had written a poem that broke me:

"I see the truth now, clear as dawn.

The nights I brushed your fears aside,

The warnings etched upon your face,

The hurt you swallowed, dignified.

You knew, oh love, you always did,

That something flickered, undefined.

But I, a fool, stood at the edge,

And played with fire in my heart, not my mind.

I never let him cross the line,

Though I teetered close with a trembling soul.

I know not why, I craved escape from the shadows cast,

But I never let him make me whole.

Still, it was betrayal all the same,

In thought, I pause, wondering what I did.

And now I lie in soft decay,

Regretting every word I hid.

I'm sorry that you bore the weight

Of loving me through shifting sand.

And though I strayed in silent ways,

I never stopped holding your hand.

You were my rock, my morning light,

The one whose trust I broke.

I only wish I'd said it more

And not when lying here in death.

When memory paints me in your mind,

Don't let it end in this dark plot.

Remember laughter, wind-swept days,

And please, my love... forget me not."

It hurt, the pain and ache in my heart intensified tenfold, till my vision blurred.

"I must go," I told Gwen after reading the letter once more.

"No, Dad, we need you."

I turned and held my daughter, kissing her on the forehead.

"No," I told her. "I need to go to your mother."

We were out the door in minutes and the ICU within the hour. Escorted into the room, my wife was resting with tubes and wires running all over the place. I stopped and started, Gwen holding my hand.

Barbara was thin and emancipated. She had lost weight in all the wrong places, even before the accident, and now, once more unbidden, the tears came.

Slowly, I walked to the bed, took her hand, and bent to kiss it.

"Stanley?" I heard her voice weekly.

I smiled and looked at her.

"Hey there, beautiful," I told her and moved to kiss her bruised lips.

"I am so sorry," she lamented, tears pouring from her eyes.

"Hey, hey," I told her, "None of that. I am here now, and that is what matters."

She squeezed my hand ever so slightly, and we whispered the needed words of love and forgiveness.

Around four hours later, she slipped into a coma and never awoke. Our reconciliation was short, but we said what we needed to.

[:::: - ::::]

I debated reading the poem she wrote for me in her final hours at her funeral. However, I did not want anyone to know about her betrayal. Other than myself, the kids were the only ones who knew about it.

That is not to say the funeral was without drama.

"You dare to turn up to my wife's funeral," I spat at the sprawled figure on the ground.

He had turned up, with his wife and the rest of the people Barbara worked with. When he came up to me, along with his co-workers, to shake my hand and offer his condolences, he was not expecting to end up with a broken nose.

"Dad!" Thomas, my son, said, stunned like everyone else. "What?"

"This is the slimy bastard that tried to get your mother to have an affair with him," I said with nothing but malice toward the man on the ground, shaking my hand. It hurt after striking the son of a bitch.

"What?" his wife said, her head on a swivel between me and her husband.

"Honey, it's not true," he said, still sprawled on the ground. "Look, Stanley, I'm sorry for your loss, but there was nothing between Barbara and me. We were just coworkers."

I pulled out my phone.

"Barbara, you looked amazing today. It has been years since I have felt such adoration for someone who looked as good as you," I read aloud, from the text messages that he had sent my wife as he tried to seduce her.

"Or how about a dozen messages and a month later..."

"I know you love Stanley, but Barbara, you have awakened something in me that has been asleep for years. My wife shuns me, yet you breathe new life into me. Surely you feel it too"

His wife was glaring at him.

"You know she admitted that she almost gave in," I told him and the listening crowd. "Because of you, I was so angry at my wife that I missed the last year of her life. Yet here you are. Flaunting your pursuit of her in front of her husband and her children. Could you not have had the decency to stay away? Do I need to show you the crude messages and lewd pictures you sent her to try and get her to betray me?"

At that point, the mix of anger and grief had me hyped up and ready to beat him to a pulp, but fortunately, my son and soon-to-be son-in-law held me back.

A couple of his co-workers and his soon-to-be ex-wife escorted him from the church.

[::::: - ::::]

Was it cliché? Of course. But then again, in a way, she helped to heal the wounds that I never got to close fully with Barbara.

Did my kids approve? Not at first, but in time, Stacy won them over.

By Stacy I mean, the ex-wife of the dickhead, Roger, that almost slept with my wife.

Following my confrontation at the funeral, it came out that he had been having affairs for several years, always citing that he lived in a dead bedroom, when the fact was that he had denied Stacy.

During the divorce, Stacy turned up at my place one day asking to talk to me about my evidence. We got to know each other and felt the spark of something. Over a year while she took her shit head cheating ex to the cleaners, that spark grew into something more, and we ended up finding out that there was nothing wrong with her at all.

Roger disappeared from her life. Fired from his job for 'performance' reasons and shunned by friends and family alike, there was no reason for him to stay.

Outside of my kids, Stacy is the only other person who has read the poem and agreed with my kids that Barbara did truly love me. She may have been at the line but never crossed it.

I struggled for a while as Stacy and I got closer. She knew that I was trying to find my way. But what helped was the dream I had one night. It was this huge pub, where the drinks tasted amazing, yet everyone laughing and having a great time was out of focus, everyone except the bartender and Barbara.

"Do you remember my poem to you?" she asked me at one point, holding my hands and looking deep into my eyes. I nodded.

"I meant every word, I hurt you Stan, I hurt you bad. And even now, it hurts that I never fully healed your wounds. But you can find love again with a woman who is falling deeper and deeper in love with you. Yet she is as scared about you as you are about her. Her husband tried to seduce me while they were married. She loves you Stan but is concerned that you will do the same thing in years to come. Love her, trust her and she will never betray you like I did."

I awoke the next morning with Stacy beside me. As she opened her eyes, I brushed her cheek.

"I love you," I told her. We had exchanged the L word several times before, but I think she sensed the difference in the way I said it. She was suddenly awake; our bodies pressed against each other.

"I love you, too," she replied as our lips parted.

Later that day, we had a barbecue, my kids and hers, and I got down on one knee and proposed.

She said yes, and six months later, we were married in a small ceremony.

Today, I love her as much as I did Barbara. Not more or less, different. I am also thankful to Barbara. I don't know if it was a dream or something more, but she gave me the push I needed. Stacy and I have a moment of silence for her every year on the anniversary of her passing, and always give Barbara a toast on her birthday.

Do I think of what could have been had she not been killed? Sure. But I try not to dwell on it. Instead, I think of what she wrote:

When memory paints me in your mind,

Don't let it end in this dark plot.

Remember laughter, wind-swept days,

And please, my love... forget me not."

[:::: Fin ::::]

[:::: Authors Ending Note ::::]

I'm working on a few projects that should be completed over the next few months, but this short one has been on my mind for some reason.

It was sorrowful, and as I wrote the poem, it spoke to me. Never being a big poetry person, I don't know why it worked, but it became the story's focus for me.

I hope you enjoyed it.

See you in the next story

John Other