Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by Elephant's Child and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1. memories 2. thanks 3. running 4. grave 5. collected 

and/or: 

1. clover 2. regrets 3. marvellous 4. enchanted 5. clock

Here is my story:

I sat beside his grave, leaning my back and head against the cool black granite. A shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds, highlighting the emerald four-leaf clover I’d had embedded above his name. I wished again for an enchanted clock that could turn back time, but knew it was impossible. As marvellous as such a thing might be, it did no good to go backwards. Forwards really was the only option.

 We had collected so many memories, happy ones, with no regrets and I sat back now to remember the day we’d met. He’d been running then, my Liam, running away from home, running away to join the Navy, thinking life on a ship that travelled the world would be far enough away from a dirt poor home with a drunken father in it.

We had both been at the bus station, him just arriving and headed towards the nearest Naval Recruiting Office, me waiting for my Aunty Maisie who was coming to live with us now that Uncle Dan had died. They'd had no children, while my home seemed to be overflowing with them. I was the eldest, so meeting Aunty had been assigned to me.

As soon as our eyes met, we knew. Liam and I were destined to be together. He sat with me while I waited for Aunty and we exchanged addresses. After we parted the letters to and from flew around the world with the regularity of sunrise, and when he landed in my home town four years later we married and began filling our own little house with children. He stayed in the Navy, going off now and again, though less often as he got older.

His final trip had been twenty years ago now, and once again I was alone, the children long gone to homes of their own, though they visited often and had arrived en-masse for his funeral. There had been an accident at sea, his ship had hit a reef somehow and sunk quickly. Bodies were recovered from life rafts, some barely alive, many dead. Liam among them. His commanding officer had brought Liam home to me and the Navy had arranged the funeral.

We’d had a good long life together, for which I now gave thanks. I settled the new flowers into the old urn and whispered again my hope that we might soon meet again in the hereafter.