Endings(Kristin Dockar) Endings

There are many endings in life. The end of the line of a train journey, the end of the day as you drop off to sleep, the end of the film as the credits roll, the last drops of a bottle of wine, and then there’s the end of a love affair.
Jody packed the piles of letters into a bin bag. The pile was huge. Three years of letters from a long-distance relationship with the love of her life. As she heaved the bin bag down the stairs to the refuse collection point, she wondered if she was doing the right thing.
All those memories. The excitement of flying to each other’s home. The intensity of the weeks they shared at each meeting. Travelling through Europe one glorious Summer when they were both halfway through their studies. All those plans. Which country would they live in? Maybe spend time in each other’s country? He would be a doctor, Jody would be a teacher. They both wanted children.
But as time went by, they began to realise they had very different views on life. Did that matter? It began to. The last time spent together was strained but he still asked if she would marry him, and she still said’ yes’.
The last letter had arrived over a year ago. It said that now was the time to end things. They had gone as far as they could. He was moving back to Brazil and she didn’t want to join him. She wanted to stay in Europe.
A simple sentence had changed everything completely when he told her that she would have to check her bed every night to make sure no unmentionables had crawled in. Her greatest phobia was…snakes.. there, she could hardly type the word, let alone say it.
And so, nothing could help her to make that journey to Brazil. To live every day with that worry of finding an unmentionable in her bed. No. they would have to live in Europe. When she said that, he looked so sad. She should have known then that the obstacles to carrying on were insurmountable.
His last letter was so kind. ‘I think we should end things but if you are ever in trouble or need anything, please, please let me know’.
She read the words and felt a physical pain. In a way she admired him for making the decision she couldn’t.
But now she was binning the letters because the new love of her life was moving in and she didn’t feel it appropriate for him to see that she had kept the letters for all these years.
As she tipped the letters into the bin, she paused. Surely there was a better way to end the life of the letters. She picked the letters out of the bin and went out into the garden with the bag. Next she dug a hole in one of the flower beds. Then, when the hole was deep enough, she tipped the letters in and set fire to them. Once they were reduced to a pile of ashes, she carefully covered the ashes with soil. Then she uprooted a clump of blue ‘Forget me Not’ flowers she was growing in a pot and carefully planted them in with the ashes.
‘There’, she thought, ‘that’s better’.
Something will grow from the letters, and that will be a better ending, for what were three very happy years of her life.

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