It was unlikely that she would be overcome with sadness once he finally died. Lately, she would diligently practice several sad facial expressions in the bathroom mirror after her morning shower. She only wished she could produce real tears as to mimic the steam drops rolling down her reflection.

Their union was until death do them part. She had happily said ‘yes’. However, before fitting into that wedding dress or carefully slipping the ring onto his finger, no one had ensured that she understood, in layman’s terms, what this ‘yes’ really meant.

No one had pointed out that the road towards death, especially nearing the end, was paved with ghastly ambushes made by dreary memories and dark ghosts from the past.

Annoyances big and small that, irrespective of different time lines, sought each other out, stuck together and formed thorny tumbleweeds that hurled themselves against her already fragile, aging and tired body. The weeds scraped open old, long forgotten scars. Abhorrently, they also cut fresh new wounds.

Still, it was the searing, almost oxygen defunct air on that road, that weighed her down most. The oxygen had been sucked out over a lifetime of conserving the ideal of her marriage at any cost. Her young stubbornness that had shut out feelings of hurt, doubt and yearning. Her inability to acknowledge that she was slowly choking in an atmosphere of her own making. Her inertia once this truth sank in.

Now there was only her reflection in the bathroom mirror. A reflection that showed loss. Just not the loss of him.

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