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The years had passed at a snail’s pace, but the graveyard was the same as it had been all those years ago, the morning sunlight dappling through the trees’ leaves, a late November chill in the air.
You visited every week, but today it was harder — November twenty-sixth. His birthday — he’d be one hundred and seven today.
The gravestone was weathered from half a decade of rain, wind, and storms, but the words were still legible:
Sebastian Sallow
1874 – 1975
Beloved Brother, Father, and Husband
The best is yet to be
Seeing them didn’t bring tears to your eyes anymore, but you could remember how it felt at first — a gaping wound, as though one of your vital organs had been ripped from your chest.
But the world had kept spinning without him, and over half a decade had passed by now, the sorrow dulling a little bit with each new day.
Your knees protested as you knelt by his grave to lay down the flowers you’d brought — dittany, like the ones he’d given you back in school when you were just lovestruck teenagers. “You smell like dittany,” he’d said.
“I know you’d laugh at me if you were here,” you said, smiling a bittersweet smile as your fingers traced the edge of the cold stone. “You’d probably call me a sentimental fool. And you’d be right.”
The breeze played with your hair, tousling it, and you could’ve sworn it was him in the air. “I know you would want me to keep going,” you said. “But it’s hard, being without you.”
You could imagine how he’d respond if he was here; a smile, a chuckle, maybe a kiss — “Don’t cry for me, love.”
You swallowed back tears and smiled. “I love you. I miss you.”
The wind blew harder, chilling your hands, and you blew into them, feeling the cool metal of your wedding band heat a little bit.
“Happy birthday, Sebastian.”