Waiting for love

At sixty, she knows love has slipped her by. Bundled up in her thick winterwear, she cuts a sad and forgotten figure sitting at the park bench; each passing minute seemingly to shrink her smaller and smaller in the face of the cold and unforgiving wintry gust.

The few stragglers walking past her would notice at most an old lady of small build wrapped up in interminable layers of winter clothing, her head crowned by a mane of shocking white hair and two small rosy patches flushing on her leathered and nondescript face - the face of a woman who has lost her fight against Father Time.

The old lady likes to sit at the park bench whenever winter's first footsteps pad into the small village she lives. She likes to watch the tykes throwing snowballs at each other, or making a snowman. She likes the bitter cold wind whipping her every senses. Winter, with its relentless daggers of falling snow; winter like a mad artist lustily painting the whole village a uniform shade of white; and most of all, winter with its reminder of that long-ago memory when she lost her love.

Winter forty years ago was when her beloved D had bidden her goodbye. Told her he was going to that faraway place to make his fortune and promising to return to marry her in five years' time. They had sat at the bench, holding hands and not saying much. Their shoulders nudged each other's and both of them had their eyes averted, preferring to focus on the white slush coating the ground, tree trunks and roofs. They had sat that way for long, dragging minutes, all the while the snow flakes falling down with unbridled abandon. Finally, he had stood up, and with nary a word, picked up his small knapsack, slung it over his thin shoulders and trudged off in the snow. He walked unsteadily, sinking his boots into the gradually thickening slush, while she watched him. As D became a speck in the horizon, the wind howled louder and the snow started falling in clumps. She left for home to soak in the warmth of the fireplace and wallow in her sadness.

Five years went by without D returning. Ten years elapsed. No news and no sight of D. Every day, the tiny flicker of hope she nursed became weaker. Until it burnt out totally, and forty years have marked itself on her wrinkled and wretched face.

Every year, she had sat at the park bench during wintertime for at least a few hours a day hoping for D's return. With the passage of forty years and even though her last glimmer of hope had long disappeared, she nevertheless still goes to the park bench out of habit.

It is getting colder and her health can no longer hold up against the invincible wind for long periods. Another ten days or so, winter will pack up and the warmer fingers of spring will sweep away the snow bedecking the land, rejuvenating life.

Disappointment written in her hunched shoulders and gnarled back, she shuffles painfully away,

Another day of waiting for her love to come back has been in fruition.