His car dragged along the sinuous path leading up to the cemetery. We had decided to visit it as a last resort to escape his parents suffocating love. This was the first time in weeks we had been able to really be alone and we were in no sense going to allow it to be cut short. He was supposed to bring me straight home and then return to his while the sun still shined and the traffic was light. Brian had just gotten used to driving and they didn’t allow him out after dark. At the time we didn’t see how a small detour could cause any trouble.
He held my hand tight as he drove lightly tracing the edges of my hand with his fingers.
His mother chastised him day and night that getting involved with girls was dangerous for his future, that he needed to stop trying to rush what needed time to grow, and that if any if this was ever meant to be it would be in time. But young love just doesn’t work like that. So we drove with no worries in mind. His parents didn’t allow us to be alone, because love doesn’t exist in teenagers, only lust. So for the sins of those who had made mistakes before us we were punished.
Brian glanced over at me as he rounded the final turn his eyes shone with so much love and admiration it made my heart beam with sun filled razes.
We reached the gate, unlike most cemeteries this one was no longer cared for and so was over grown. Here everything was dead the trees with not a leaf to be seen even though it was mid august, the grass dried and long dead crunched beneath our shoes as we approached the wrought iron gate. He smiled at me for no other reason than that he was glad to be alive here with me in his arms; I smiled for the same reason. Together we jumped over the fencing laughing as I tumbled to the ground.
“You clumsy thing” he mocked as he ran for a chase I sped right by him coming to a stop at the edge of my families old plot. We sat. “You make my every day worth living you know?”
“I do, because you make mine worth living too”
“Anna I know it’s been only a short time we’ve been seeing each other but my mother’s wrong with you my life seems so much easier all my troubles fade away so you see I want us to be together forever” with that he produced a small velvet box that had been concealed in his pocket. Opening it he bent down to one knee and asked a question no adolescent should ever have to respond to,
“Will you marry me?”Why no child should ever have to hear this question is simply because we will always give the wrong answer.
“Anna together we’ll run away, after we leave here tonight we’ll go home spend one last night with our families then we’ll leave this town and make our own. I love you so much please be with me forever?”
Who could deny this bold declaration of love and devotion, so in moment of complete joy I accepted?
We remained out till long after the stars had appeared in the sky and shared innocent kisses in a tight embrace. If life could freeze at any one moment I would have wanted it to have been then for that evening was one of the most perfect nights the bright lights of the sky had ever seen. We shared it together our sweet love powering our hearts and allowing such pure bliss to flow through our veins.
Sadly all good things must come to an end as did our perfect evening with a vicious call from his mother he quickly hurried me into his car. At my door, the last scene of our night was the final kiss he placed on my lips before disappeared into the dark. Later that night as I lay on my bed reading a story that seemed much like our own a call came through to my house. My mother brought it to me informing me that it was Brian’s mother.
“Hello” I whispered into the receiver expecting to hear her angry voice illustrating to me the brutal punishment Brian would receive for staying out past curfew. Instead from the other end of the line all I could hear was a woman’s sobbing.
“Anna is that you dear” I was just barely able to make out his mothers words through her grasping for breath. “There has been an accident,” that was about the point where I drifted out of the conversation as she went on to give me the painful account of the last few hours happenings. It turned out his mother had been right about some things he didn’t need to be driving around in the dark because it turned out that Brian had, had a partial blindness he had never mentioned to me , and in his hurry to get home he had struck another car. It had been a mistake on his part a mistake that could have been easily avoided if only he would have left while the sun had still been out.
The next day Brian’s mother came to pick me up to visit him at the hospital I stayed with him till he breathed his final breath and as he did so I held his hand tight lightly tracing the edges of his hand with my fingers. I glanced at him as my eyes shone with tears of love and admiration and I hoped it would make his heart beam with sun filled razes. I said goodbye, his ring still on my finger and my love for him still in my heart.
It seems to me now that a lot of the things his mother had told him, that at the time we had found overbearing where actually quite true us being together had endangered his future so much he had died rather than give our immature love time to grow and that if we had just given it time it would have worked out in the end, because his mother later confided in me that she was going to permit us to date if only we would have given it a little time.
So in exchange for one wonderful night the boy that could have grown up to be the man I’d love traded his life and we had shared it together our sweet love that once powered our hearts as dead as that grass that had crunched beneath our feet. That now and forever will keep me from allowing any such pure bliss to flow through my veins, since nothing can now flow through his.