(Author’s Note: Sometime truth is best expressed as fiction. Your lost loved is always with you, even if just in a dream.)
“I don’t think I can make it.”
“Of course, you can.”
“No, really,” the wife said. “I have to sit down for a while.”
“But we can’t say we’ve been to the Smokey Mountains if we haven’t hiked up to see Grotto Falls,” the husband protested light-heartedly.
“Yes, but the first time was forty years ago. We were young.” She paused. “Oh look. There’s a nice big rock. Come on, let’s sit down for a while.” After she sat, she made a face. “Yuck. It’s wet.”
“It rained this morning, remember,” he said. “Everything is wet. The trees are still dripping with rain. Leaves are a deeper green after rain, don’t you think?”
“Are you going to sit down or not?” the wife asked.
“Naw.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to get my butt wet,” he replied.
She laughed.
“Do you feel better now?” he asked.
“Not much. Why don’t you go on without me?”
“No. I have to have you with me so I can kiss you under the falls,” he explained.
“I tell you what,” she began her bargain, “you go up to the falls alone, and I’ll give you a big kiss when you come back.”
“It won’t be the same.” He took a moment to pout. “I think I can hear the falls from here. It can’t be too much further.” He sniffed. “I can even smell the water spray.”
“You know I can’t smell anything.” She took his hand. “Look in my eyes. Can’t you see I can’t take another step?”
He didn’t have to look. He knew. “All right. But you better have your kisser ready when I come back around that bend in the trail.”
“Absolutely. Now go ahead so we can get back to town for supper.” She smiled. “I tell you what. You cup your hands and fill them with water from the falls. Then you can splash me with it.”
“You don’t like being splashed.”
“Just this once. Just for you.”
He looked up the trail and started plodding along. “She’s always been a party pooper,” he mumbled. As he went around the bend he saw the falls. “I knew we were almost there.” He paused and glanced down the trail. She could still make it, he thought. He knew she could. Then he shook his head. “I think I’d rather splash her with the water.”
The falls were crowded with families. Children laughed as they dipped their feet in the cold mountain stream.
“I knew it,” he whispered. He didn’t want the others to notice the old man was talking to himself. “It’s not as much fun without her.”
He cupped his hands and dipped them into the pool in front of the falls. He began his trip back to his wife. When he turned the corner he saw the boulder where she was sitting. The water slipped through his fingers. She was gone.
“Where did she go? Where did she go? Where did she go?” He started running and tripped over a tree root.
As his old body crashed onto the floor he awoke and found himself in his bedroom. Lifting himself up, he crawled back into bed and reached over to the other side—her side—and found it empty.