A Minute to Midnight.

My memory of our cotton year is a vivid image of bright red on our sheets. He had been coughing incessantly all night, and only now had we realised that something was not right. The next year - paper - saw him become exactly that, frail and paper-seeming. The tiniest of things would have him trembling in his weakness. Speak a little too loud and he'd shiver. Come leather, and we were picking out his funeral dress - a brilliant black suit complete with a ridiculous tie and belt that seemed out of place for the occasion - his usual, humorous style.

On our fifth anniversary, wood, they nailed his coffin shut and lowered it into the ground.

I was obviously heartbroken. Anyone who has ever lost someone they loved will be able to tell you exactly how it feels. Heart wrenching. The feeling of having nothing to live for. Perhaps you'd have to face it someday too, God forbid, and I hope you have the strength to keep going through those terrible, terrible days.

For months, I had refused to speak a word. I slept little, even went without sleep whenever I could. Days went by without me eating or drinking properly. One might make an improper joke about how I began to look more and more like him in his final days. I couldn't care less, though. I had lost most of my will to live.

Yet, not all was lost. In the afterglow of all things done and dusted, there is a magical warmth that keeps you going. The hope of him coming back someday was perhaps my source of warmth. I knew it was impossible and that I was crazy to keep to such preposterous notions, but living in isolation for months does make you a little insane. Exactly the amount of insane he'd appreciate, I told myself.

For our next anniversary, he'd managed it somehow. It was later that I learnt what brought him back. You see, when a person dies, they get to rethink their life. If they ever had a last wish that somehow couldn’t be fulfilled, they'd hang around till it was. And that was what made him come back to me.

"Hello, sugar." I turned around to see whose voice sounded so perfectly like his and I was surprised to see him - pleasantly so. Though he didn't look the way I'd have wanted him to, devoid of any traces of his illness, I guess all that mattered to me in that moment was that he was back. His torn, rotting lips, empty sockets where his eyes were - he had donated them - and his liquid arms devoid of nails didn't deter me even a little bit from being happy that he was back.

He took me to the woods where we loved to picnic in our younger days when the illness hadn't begun to consume him. It was the middle of a summery June night filled with the fragrance of moisture and dead things, and a fog loomed over our surroundings. Alone, I would have found it scary; but with him, all was well. We danced and we sang and we revelled in our day just as if the metaphorical 'happy old days' were back again for good, never to end.

It was one of the most amazing nights I had ever spent in my life.

He had to leave soon, and just like a good wife, I let him. It takes magical days for a miracle to happen, and our anniversary was the best example of one. He promised he'd return, though.

It's been fourteen years since that day. Technically, our twentieth anniversary. By now, I was exactly like him when he died, pale and brittle like a china doll. A minute to midnight, and I was waiting in my chair, facing his empty one, dressed in my wedding gown, ready to be his bride once again.

Every June 25th, we celebrated our wedding anniversary. This one would be no different.