Faded

Devin P. L. Edwards
BERNARD’S BODY SAT ON HIS OLD COUCH. He was silent for hours and simply shook his head. He could not understand how after 37 years of marriage his wife could simply walk away, but she had.
Retirement had not sat well with Bernard; he liked to work. He liked being up early. He enjoyed the schedule: alarm, shower, shave, breakfast, newspaper, coffee with Angela, work lunch with his colleagues, come home to Angela, sitcoms and game shows, dinner, news bed.
When he retired he would still wake up and shower at the same time. He would still shave and have breakfast. He still read the paper. After retirement, coffee with Angela, his wife, his soul-mate, his best friend and the mother of his children – all grown – became much longer. He would realize that half the day was gone and just before lunch he would go outside to the garden, check the leaves of the plants, check the soil to see if it needed water or fertilizer and then spend an hour or two in his shed working on this project or on that chore. He made a birdhouse for Angela once. He painted it a soft yellow and white, and then put it in the front yard a few metres from the large bay window in the kitchen. Angela loved that birdhouse, and every time she looked at it she smiled, and so would Bernard. Something he had done had made her happy.
Lunchtime would come and Angela would walk from the house to come get Bernard and tell him lunch was ready. She never yelled for him.
Bernard would eat lunch in the beautiful quiet of 37 years and afterwards he’d have a cup of tea with Angela and they would talk. Bernard’s fingers would begin to twitch for want of work and he’d pull his body out of the seat and back into the shed. He’d fix this part of the house, or that part of the mower or the snowplow. He’d take the railings off the stairs and put them on the lathe until he had the right design and put them back. He’d pull off a rotted fence board and replace it with a new, freshly painted one.
But today, Bernard had woken up late in the evening, and he was alone. He looked for Angela and couldn’t find her. The garden had overgrown in the night and the fence had rotted. The lawn mower was rusted and broken and the snowplow was in pieces.
Angela was gone and he couldn’t find her; her clothes weren’t in their closet and her shoes were no longer by the front door.
He’d phoned his children, each in turn, and each had seemed so tired. They all, in turn, told him not to worry, and that they would be by soon. A strange woman in a nurse’s uniform came into his home, made him dinner and cleaned his house.
As the strange woman left, Bernard watched her drive away from the bay window in the kitchen. The soft yellow and white birdhouse still sat atop its perch in the yard, but the yellow had faded away and the white paint had peeled off and scattered about the yard like snow.
Bernard didn’t understand where the time, or Angela, had gone.