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the end of the garden. I closed the shutters once again, a little more afraid than the last time because the affirmation of the figure's reality scared me. As fast as I had opened those shutters, I closed them disturbed by the figure that seemed threatening in the near darkness.

Peter had never shown emotion. He had been distant from me, although our lives had been under the same roof for years. When he died, he was as much a stranger as ever before, as I realized from the small remnants of his life that there was no shared ground. This was his. This was mine. I had never demanded, never asked for very much at all. I watched as his ashes scattered over woodland that he adored, and wondered about how people's lives touch and yet never go past the surface.

His death had made me angry. It had been sudden, abrupt, no "goodbyes" and I felt I had at least deserved that. This felt like the biggest rejection of the human soul, one that was never redeemable, or could never be forgiven, and that festered hurt had swollen my mind into a mish mosh of muddled memories and distorted vision. Why would he never buy me that one thing I treasured the most ? It was a simple need. There had been so many hints, and yet he had never bitten, never heeded my needs and now it was too late. I would have to be the debutante without an orchid, an orchid that I so wanted and desired, as if my own femininity depended upon it.

Night brought thoughts, and dreams, rushed moments of muddled thinking, followed by the kind of sleep that coma victims know, an enforced sleep, rather than a relaxed one. I woke the next morning and heard branches against the shutters outside, a familiar noise, though one that has irritated me since living in this beautifully wayward house. Going downstairs, I smelt the last wood smoke smell from last nights fire, and opened curtains and shutters in order to let daylight invade and awaken me to the reality of being alone. One more day alone or yet another day that would roll back into yesterday or forward into tomorrow. As I opened the last shutters, an amusing thing caught my eye. It was a branch of a tree that stooped and swayed in the distance, and in my imagination of the night before, one that I had mistaken for movement or the man in the mysterious cloak. How fickle the mind, when tired and bewildered by desertion and the pain of loss and lack of recognition.

Later that day, I walked the dog up the garden to the side of the woods, where I was no longer afraid to tread. The dog held its head proudly against the breeze and I breathed the air of the mountain, still angry, though calmer than the day before. At the edge of the field I could see something in the distance on the ground. Unsure of whether I would find an animal savaged by yet another, as I had seen so many times in the country where life is cruel, I approached with caution, and as I did so, stopped above this mysterious object that had caught my eye. Holding it up, I could see that it was a cloak, and shivers ran down my spine. Perhaps the figure had really been there. Perhaps a stranger was watching me. I looked down to where the cloak had lain and there before my eyes was a small packet. Something inside me startled me. The aroma of Peter was all around me as I handled that cloak, and as I opened the small package, I could see those delicate petals that formed the most beautiful orchid I had ever seen.

I will never know why or how, though I believe in the mysteries of life and death, and the significance of one event that can change human perception of needs. The orchid sits in a vase of water, and though its petals may wilt and die, its significance helps me to face tomorrow, knowing that in some way, my needs mattered.

End

Learn more about this author, Rachelle de Bretagne.
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