They had met on the train.
He was a handsome soldier on reassignment just passing through.
“May I sit here?” he had asked.
And so it began.
Fifty-eight wonderful years of marriage eventually followed that first encounter.
He has been gone some years now, and sometimes she will go to a railway station – it does not matter where it is – and reminisce about that day as she watches the people who wait for their train to arrive.
Couples holding hands, children sitting with their parents or flitting around, solitary individuals reading their newspapers or iPhones.
She wonders where they are headed and what awaits them.
There was a time when she discovered an abandoned train station.
She entered, and after sitting down imagined hearing once again the voices, the laughter, the whispered greetings, and feeling the embraces of a loved one just off the train.
The same evening after she had returned home, her attention was drawn to the hearth.
Above the fireplace, the fading light from the window highlighted a single tile.
There in the living room, it was a reminder of their life together, just as she was passing through.
