The Passing Breeze

David A. Cohen

Larry lays there, his arms lovingly caressing the waist of Jeanne, who was no longer breathing beside him. Now, at this moment, he could only think of Jeanne and their life together. a life that had ended moments before as Jeanne had decided to die in her own bed, Larry at her side.

Jeanne, who never complained, and never whined about her illness, was the essence of a contented person; grateful for what life had given her and the time she had.

Jeanne had wanted to be cremated. Larry was reluctant, but Jeanne had laughed about it in an attempt to diffuse the tension. “Put me in a matchbox and bury me in the park,” she would say. “Like a parakeet.”

Larry thought of how they first met, a dance of returned phone calls after a blind date. He knew right away. She wasn’t certain. She told him how he had won her over with gentle humor, usually directed at himself. When someone asked him if he ever played sports as a young man, he would hold his 5’3” stature erect and reply, “I played center on the High School basketball team.” “You’re so handsome,” Jeanne would say after he had made a self-deprecating joke. Larry knew that his face, scarred from a childhood accident, was not that of a handsome man. He loved her all the more for believing such a fiction.

They spent their honeymoon at her beloved ocean swimming, sunning, and riding the waves. At the Jersey shore, each day, Jeanne would insist on buying a vanilla orange cone for herself and a vanilla chocolate one for Larry, so that she could argue their relative merits. Watching with laughter and love as the melting ice cream decorated their clothes. They would return each summer to relive their special moments together.

Larry gently, but only momentarily, let go of his lover to put an album on the old record player they had bought together at a flea market. He chose their favorite piece: Romance by Shostakovich. This was their song. As the violin lovingly repeated the refrain of the lyrical music, its bittersweet melody now enveloping Larry, he stared at Jeanne. He imagined the music caressing her still body like warm ocean waves washing her greying hair. Larry thought back to when they had first heard the piece on their first date at a concert in New York. They had laughed about the overpriced Italian dinner they had eaten in a restaurant across the street from the concert hall. They did not laugh at the music they heard that night. Larry recalled leaning over and gently kissing Jeanne on the cheek as tears fell from her eyes. The music, melodic and beautiful, he fell in love with Jeanne at that moment.

Larry did not want to honor Jeanne’s wish to be cremated. He imagined his friend enveloped by flame, burnt into dust as if their love had never existed.

A rush of air arrived at the window, and a gusty hot summer wind burst through into the bedroom throwing papers about. Knickknacks, even a perfume bottle flew off a dresser as waves of air surged through the room, leaving a scent of love exiting as it had entered. A photo remained of them sitting atop a small table showing them on their Honeymoon at an ocean resort, both of them smiling like teenagers appearing forty years younger than their actual age. Larry breathed in the perfume, the same scent she wore that night at the concert. He felt the presence of Jeanne in that summer breeze.

The thought of the wind, the perfume, and the air sweetened with love, had swept over him. Surely this was no coincidence. The cremation did not mean having to lose her. He would spread her ashes over the ocean she loved so much and celebrate their love with an ice cream cone.

Larry smiled. Of course, it was Jeanne. The music had ended. The Romance had not.