Love forever

Since early morning, it had been raining, making it hard to spend a day in a graveyard. Yet, Ricardo had been sitting now on a bench for an hour, looking at Agatha’s grave and wishing her a happy Valentine’s Day. He’d brought her a box of bittersweet chocolate, a bouquet of roses, a red wine bottle, and a lunch. He was like, ‘Hey, so what! we still have the right to celebrate.’

During the glamorous days when Agatha was alive, the best Valentine’s Day gift they used to give was the gift of uninterrupted time together, swinging with their love. They did not need to leave the house to celebrate but spent the entire day thanking God that they’d been together.

Ricardo put the bouquet and the box of chocolate on the grave, Held the bottle of wine from the bottom, and exposed the label to ensure that Agatha saw he brought what she favored. “Here’s to my wife who’d seen my best and my worst and wished I got what I wanted, rather than what I deserved,” he said and poured a little of wine on the grave, then drank straight from the bottle.

“You must be missing Max,” he addressed Agatha in her grave, knowing how much she used to love that lovely dog and how she considered him as their son. “ Max couldn’t make it; he’d broken his leg and needed to rest.” Ricardo kneeled, took a long sip, and looked through the graves, wondering what the wisdom behind the puzzle of death and life was.

Finishing half the bottle in no time made Ricardo want to dance. He searched YouTube through his cell phone and played Julio Iglesias songs. “come on, honey,” he reached out the grave closed his eyes till he felt that his wife was now within his two arms. “You smell like heaven,” he told Agatha’s ghost, remembering their first date and the honeymoon that they’d spent half of it staring into each other’s eyes and the rest of the time walking at the beach.

Ricardo was now absolutely soaked in the rain but didn’t feel it. He was more absorbed in the warm feeling of the moment. He remembered how they had been having fun together. They sort of get home, open a bottle of wine and go, “yay! Just us, let’s celebrate.” In the winter’s long nights, they watched Netflix and ate popcorn. Sometimes when they were hungry and did not know what to eat, they invented new meals recipes, most of which ended up in the wastebasket. And very often behaved like kids and played Jumping games, memory games, hide-and-seek, and whatever occurred to their minds. They loved being together that they didn’t like having so many friends. Their good time was dining in a Chinese restaurant, stuffing themselves with a lot of rice, driving for long hours listening to good music, or sitting at home doing nothing.

But as the course of life, nothing is perfect. Ricardo and Agatha had adored their intimate relationship but unfortunately missed the reality that good intimacy did not always guarantee good sex. The same elements that nurture love are sometimes the same things that stifle desire. Agatha had been an actual caregiver; she’d taken care of Ricardo much as taking care of children. So he’d started to feel like being with his beloved mother and not with a woman; he liked taking her to bed or even telling her about his longing for good sex.

Respecting the valuable intimate relationship with Agatha forced Ricardo to be sober as an angel, but for a while. In a few years, Ricardo started to cheat on Agatha and felt guilty because he was doing so. And now that Agatha had passed, his feeling of guilt was killing him.

A few days after Agatha had died, Ricardo had dared to search for her memoir book and read it. He was stunned to discover that Agatha was aware he was cheating on her.

“I knew that from the smell of Ricardo’s clothes after coming back late night,” she wrote. “That hurt me a lot and made me cry, but I’ve never confronted my husband. I convinced myself he is a kid, and it’s not fair to stop a kid from playing around.”

The voice of Julio Iglesias was now all over the place, or that how Ricardo felt listening to Crazy Lyrics talking about being crazy for feeling so lonely, feeling so blue. He felt Agatha like she was an alive woman - a woman made of blood and flesh getting closer to him that he felt her hot breath at his neck. Ricardo needed a woman to comfort his body. He had not made love since Agatha died; his sadness for her death made him a prisoner to the house rarely he went out or socialized with anyone.

The rain stopped now. So, there was nothing but the sound of silence. Ricardo listened carefully; he felt Agatha wanted to talk to him. He sorts of heard her voice sounding inside his head saying something like, Hi, how are you doing, then asking clearly, “Do you eat well?”

He freaked out but was happy to hear his wife’s voice again, “I do, I do.” He answered and took a long sip from the bottle.

“Don’t lie. I can feel how slim you’ve become.”

Ricardo pointed to the lunch box he brought and left it on the bench, “Look, I have a lunch box there,”

“What is in it?”

“Chinese rice. I know you love Chinese rice. Come let us eat together like the old days.”

“You know I can’t eat anymore. I’m dead.” Ricardo felt his skin shrinking. ‘yes, she’s dead,’ he thought and was about to wake up from his illusion but still wanted a little more time. “Fine, let us have one more dance.”

“Sorry, honey. It’s time I go back to my grave. To where I’m belonging.” Agatha’s ghost said and disappeared.

Ricardo was standing alone now amid a rainstorm, hungry and soaked, wanting to talk with someone about his sorrow, but there was no one alive at the graveyard. He thought about his dog Max waiting for him. ‘A good boy,’ so he went on getting ready to leave, picked up the lunch box, and headed to the house to eat with Max and tell him all that happened today.