The Death Date

Flash Fiction

When they knew each other, they were very young. When they were still very young, she was gone. In later years, Eric wondered if she’d ever been real or just a dream, despite the fact he’d loved her and touched her. They had known each other when he was in college. She was a few years younger, and he was almost done, almost ready for ”real life”. She had supposedly dropped out and moved back home shortly after he graduated, and he had already been losing touch with her, due to the different directions their lives were taking. She wrote him a letter that September day in the 1970s, saying goodbye, that she had decided to marry somebody from her hometown that she had known from high school, and might be continuing her studies elsewhere, but would no longer be attending the college they had met at, and of course, could no longer correspond with him. 

Eric did not know her married name, so he’d never replied. He was busy then, anyway, trying to find someone else to settle down with, because they’d never really been serious about each other. Now, she was just a dream of a long ago life, and he never thought of her until his wife died unexpectedly. Eric thought back to the strange, beautiful girl, that had been the best lover he’d ever known, but who wouldn’t say much about herself and had few friends. She glowed with an almost ethereal presence, he sometimes thought. He’d never met her family or seen her hometown, and knew little of her past. Of course, what kind of past does anyone have at 19? 

He’d been drawn to her because of her beauty and sophisticated quality, impressive for a small town college, but she never said much.She never wanted anything serious either, but her other qualities outweighed that. She just drew him in. But, something about her never seemed real, and seemed dreamlike. He saw her again at his wife’s burial. So many years, and there she was..on a photo on a tombstone, near his wife’s yawning grave. It was her name, and photo, no doubt. He looked at her death date. It was the year before they had met. He couldn’t comprehend it. Was she just a dream? Was it her? Her glance from the old photo told him..yes.