The Goodbye

I  stood in the driveway, my back resting against my car, our two big
greyhounds, faithful companions of many years, inside the car, waiting.

All was silent as dusk faded color into gray.  The small, modest
frame  house, lonely in the quiet woods; the magnificent variety
 of native trees and plants beginning to show signs of inattention.

A light mist rained gently down, as though the sky were crying.

From this house, shared with my husband of more than fifty years,
four children and many generations of dogs had lived and played,
and gone.  I would not see it again.

The soft rain gently moved the leaves of two tall oaks with barely
a whisper.  Those woods had been tended by him with such care, through
the seasons of so many good years; those oaks planted by the two of us
when we were young ourselves.

It occurred to me that the house had grown old, and so had I.

Dark was closing in that summer evening.  I got into my car
and drove away.  I  felt that I was leaving my husband behind
there in the woods that he loved, in the warm summer rain,
as twilight became night.
Kathleen K. Ennis