Prologue
~
Show me the
meaning of being lonely
Is this the
feeling I need to walk with
Tell me why I can’t be there where you are
There’s
something missing in my heart
~
The cemetery was nearly empty.
Most of the guests had long since gone home, but I was still there,
kneeling in grief in front of the shiny new marble tombstone. Through my teary eyes, I read the
inscription once again.
Leighanne
Reena Littrell
Beloved wife
and daughter
July 20, 1969
– October 15, 2001
I shook my head, more tears falling from my eyes, splattering onto
the hard, cold-looking stone. I
couldn’t believe she was gone, just over a month after our first
anniversary.
I looked towards the heavens.
I wanted to ask the Lord why, why He had taken my beautiful Leighanne
from me. We had just barely begun our
life together. We had planned to start
a family, to have many children and grow old together. But these plans were no more, for Leighanne
now lay in a rose-covered casket, which was soon to go into the ground.
I could recall vividly the horrible events of the past three
days. I remembered getting the call
from the local paramedic squad.
“Your wife Leighanne has been involved in a traffic accident,”
they had told me over the phone.
“Is she okay?” I had demanded.
“She’s alive,” was all they would tell me and suggested I come to
the hospital as soon as possible. I had
left as soon as I hung up the phone, but by the time I made it there, the
paramedic’s words were no longer true.
Leighanne had arrested in the ambulance just moments after I got the
phone call and was declared dead shortly after, in a trauma room at the
hospital.
I never got to tell her goodbye, I thought,
sniffling back tears. I never got to
say “I love you” one last time. I
looked towards the sky again, knowing I didn’t have to. Leighanne was up in Heaven now, watching
down on me, and she already knew.
Still, I had to say it, more to comfort myself than to let her
spirit know of my love for her. “I love
you, Leigh,” I whispered, slowly standing up.
I glanced one last time at her grave and turned away.
As I looked up, I came face to face with a young woman, who had
been standing just a few feet behind me.
“Hi, Brian,” she said softly.
I stared at her intently, at her curly black hair, her dark
eyes. And recognition came over
me.
“Grace.”
***
Lyrics
taken from Backstreet Boys’ “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely”
