Chilling rain pours from the heavy fog colored sky. Mist cloaks the weathered grave stones. The bark on the leafless trees is wet, making them look black. Standing starkly against the gray.
Everything is still. Through the mist, we can hear her before we see her. A dark figure with an angelic voice. She's ghostly, gliding among the stone markers, her mournful song piercing the foggy atmosphere.
She kneels before a small, modest marker, delicate white fingers trailing over the engraved letters. Her melancholy tune fading into a tender lullaby. Closer, her eyes are vacant and lifeless, her face is etched with lines telling a story of loss and hardship and her posture is weary, drained.
She seems lost in a memory, her song slowly dies. It's replaced by silent sobs as she caresses the grave stone, obviously the marker of someone she loved.
"November 17, 1932 - January 25, 1933" is inscribed, a live cruelly stolen by death far too soon. A mother's last ray of sunshine in a dark and painful world.
The lullaby is taken up again as she rises with a lingering longing look, and like a ghost, she slowly fades back into the mist, leaving no trace of her visit.
--A.L. 1-20-12
