An Anniversary Moment

In the day’s final hour, a tan-colored quarter-ton pickup winds its way around a group of small, man-made lakes on the outskirts of town before stopping next to a level embankment covered in crabgrass and tall weeds turning brown. The outlines of a man and a woman emerge from the sides of the vehicle and peel two flattened chairs from the truck bed. The man unfolds the seats next to each other facing the water, and then helps the woman settle in.

The couple slurps twist cones, trying to enjoy them before they melt into sticky puddles of sugar and syrup. Speaking little, they absorb their claim of the deserted lake.

The late-August heat wave is temporarily receding as the evening progresses, though an unrelenting humidity hangs in the air and pastes itself to the skin. Raucous chirping by dozens of locusts and crickets, hiding just out of sight, accompanies the slow revelation of celestial hues. The sky blooms into layers of ruby, tangerine, and fuchsia; seamlessly blending the tones into an oeuvre of pastels and hearty reds.

At first unnoticed, shadows silently drain the light from the clouds and then spread downward through the distant trees and across the still water of the lakes.

The man’s full head of silver hair reflects the last of the sun’s rays with a shine rivaling the chrome bumper of the pickup. The woman laughs softly at this, though she is not sure why. Perhaps a running-joke, three decades in the making?

This moment is a husband’s gift to his wife of thirty years. She is a woman succumbing to the effects of an incurable brain-disease, and he wants her to have more of what she is losing so quickly: new memories. Their lives have been defined by the disease, but as they sit, watching the sun disappear over the flat horizon, they lose their identity and let the shadows of the evening wash over them.