"Nine One One: What's your emergency?"
"Hey, this is Dan up here at Sliders. There is something kind of weird out here on the beach. There is a guy just standing out there, and he's been there in the same place for like an hour. He was out there when I got up this morning right after dawn".
"Sir, this number is only for emergencies."
I know that. But this guy has been standing there so long, and the thing is, he's holding a lady and....and....I think she's dead.
"I'll send someone there right away sir".
I had met Kelly right after college when I was just beginning my career as an civil engineer in Jacksonville, Florida. She was working in our office as a temp for Kelly Girls as they were called in the day. During that first coffee break we shared she and I laughed about her working for a name-appropriate company. That was the beginning of our romance. We dated for a few months, until she and I were both sure that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.
We were married in 1965 with little fanfare on the day. We knew we had a deep abiding love and since neither one of us had any close relatives in the area, it was just the two of us at the courthouse that day, with some borrowed witnesses the judge's secretary had found for our ceremony. Our children, first Jack and then Amy, came along a few years later, and our days were filled with work and attending school functions, or after school activities with the kids.
As my career increased my income, we bought a house in Orange Park so the kids could be close to the school they loved. Our summers were spent at the beach house on Amelia Island just north of Jacksonville. I was still working in Jacksonville so it was a short drive for me to make each day, and all of us loved our house at the beach. We could watch the endless motion of the sea and spend weekends at play on the sand or look for fossilized shark's teeth after storms. When the kids were older, there were some evenings Kelly and I would stroll on the beach, and if it was particularly deserted, we would share a slow waltz with music only the two of us could hear. I loved holding her in my arms as our toes melted into the warm sand of the beach.
Kelly and I were early risers and it was the best part of the day for the two of us to sit out on the deck with coffee in hand and watch the sunrise over the ocean. It was our special time, when we could just be together without really saying more than a few words. It was like a private, magical sanctuary we shared whenever we could during those summer days, and the spell would only be broken by the sound of our children in the kitchen clanking bowls and opening and closing the refrigerator door.
It's surprising how the years can fly by sometimes. One minute you are a young married couple with small children, and then it seems like in the next moment your children are grown and gone with lives of their own. We had always been happy with our children around, but we knew the time would come again when it would be just the two of us.
It was early spring of 1987 when Kelly began feeling tired and run down. She dismissed it at first as just "age catching up with me". But when she never seemed to feel any stronger, her doctor ordered tests at the local hospital and it confirmed what we had all suspected. It was cancer. Not the kind you can treat with a cocktail of drugs and some chemo. It was a fast moving cancer in her lymph nodes and the doctors gave her only a few months.
We had been happiest at the house on the beach, and I wanted to do anything I could to make Kelly's last days as pleasant as possible so we took up residence there. Both of us had trouble sleeping sometimes now. My mind was filled with dread, and I think I was already grieving for the wife I hadn't even lost yet. Kelly was always the kind of person who thought more of others than of herself, and so she must have been worried that I was falling into a deep depression because she surprised me one morning by asking to go for a car ride.
It was still dark when we had gotten up, and remained so when Kelly asked for the car ride. It was a warm morning with just a gentle breeze stirring the air that held the promise of a hot and humid day. We got in the car and I just drove around at a leisurely pace. No destination was asked for, or intended. We were happy to just be out of the house and together sharing the semblance of a day of normalcy.
I don't know why we stopped at the beach up by Sliders. Maybe it was because we could see the faint glimmer of the sun just ready to make its entrance at the horizon. I helped Kelly out of the car and supported her as we made the short walk to the beach where we could once again share a last waltz on the beach and witness one last sunrise together.
It was so hard to let her go. I knew she had left me, but death holds no fear for the loving heart, and so I continued to hold her until I came out of my reverie when the officer arrived and gently put his hand on my shoulder.
© CJW-webduck 2007
