Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Before and After (05/14/09)
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TITLE: MY GOODBYE | Previous Challenge Entry
By S de Villiers
05/20/09 -
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She sits on the edge of his grave under the shade of the big oak tree with Bella, her black Labrador, next to her. Taking a deep breath she carefully opens the creased letter she’s been holding all the way to the graveyard.
With a pat of her hand on Bella’s head and clearing her throat she starts reading;
“As you know I have never been very good with words but if you could read this, hopefully you would have been able to look beyond the words and right inside of my heart. You were part of such a small fraction of my life but I can not find words big enough to portray what impact you had on me and believe it or not, even more since you’re gone.
I think one of the major things that turned my life upside down was the fact that you taught me so much about God and in turn I thank God so often for putting you in my life and that you had the time and the patience to put up with all of me.”
She stops reading for a moment to take in the peacefulness surrounding her.
“Sometimes I would imagine where I would have been by now if not for that and coming to mind is not a pretty picture. I can never repay you but you can be sure that for the rest of my life I will always ask God to take good care of you.
I can not express how truly sorry I am for those days that I was miserable with you and usually I would try and make excuses for it to convince myself that I had reason to be like that but I think being miserable was just a part of whom I was.
In some way I can not really explain, it’s as if I wanted you to look after me. Putting such an unrealistic expectation on you, it is only now that I realized how selfish and self centred I have been. There are still days that I would cry with silent tears because you are not here anymore and I cannot play silly games with you and I cannot tell you about my weekend and I cannot ask your opinion or advice about things.
You made me laugh so often but more than that I learned not to take life so serious and by doing so I am constantly reminding myself to put my trust in God. Being the happy-go-lucky person that you were, you might have thought writing something like this is a waste of time and maybe you could not care less but I wish I could have given something back to you, because you left me with a reason - to and an example of how to live.
I also learned that God has so much love for me it is enough to love others without expecting anything back, and as much love as I have put in every cup of coffee I made for you or every picture I tried to draw for you or every assignment I typed for you, with so much love I wrote this, even if you will never be able to read it. Maybe I tried to hard to get your approval, although I don’t really know what for, and I don’t think I ever got it, but none of that matters anymore because I know now that I never needed it.
I cannot take everything back to start again but at least I can go forward, living to be a better person for God and not for you and hopefully, someday my life would be as meaning full to someone as yours have been to me. “
She closes her eyes seeing his smile before her again. “Well that is it,” she says as she quickly wipes a tear from her eye and then smiles.
“Come Bella, now we can play.”
Laughing at Bella who wags her tail enthusiastically as if she understands, she walks past the sombre graves, knowing she will not come back here again.
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