White Satin

She was sheathed in white satin, and he in a suit. They traveled together between down the aisle to the alter that had begun their marriage.  His head filled with images of their eleven years together. 

He held her tighter remembering how she jumped up and down clapping her hands as knelt in the sand offering her a diamond ring in a white satin box. He recalled the exhaustion and joy simultaneously glittering in her eyes after their son was born. And the gentile laugh that would escape each time he stumbled over the word accessory.

Forty years. A short life. A tear traced the cheeks she had kissed so many times. It was usually he who comforted her when she cried. Today was different. 

He took a deep breath and sighed, his heart feeling as if it may disintegrate. Delicately, he placed an adorned satin box into a wreath of white flowers. It was hard to believe everything she ever was somehow fit into that small white box.  

He knew that, although her ashes were collected there, her bubbly, kind spirit carried on in those who loved her.