Caroline sat in front of her picture window with a steaming cup of coffee gazing out in the glowing amber ball of the morning sun rising as if it were ascending for the first time.
The last eight hours much like the prior two months and even past 30 years had been a nightmare.
Prisoned in an unhappy marriage, each day was filled with a gloom of unkindness at the least and a barrage of verbal torturous abuse at its peak, heightened with venom and belittling, which made every day seem like carrying 100 pounds of extra weight.
Stricken with fatal illness and frightened of its result, her husband took every opportunity to saturate the house with misery and darken her every moment with a pain to match his own.
Even in his final hours, she kneeled over him, trying to help comfort his last minutes. Collapsed and gasping for each breath, he grabbed her collar and with his last cruel word said.
“You did this.”
But the fault was not a her feet, but written is the cosmos along with every other being.
As the ambulance took him away, she closed the door and inhaled fully for the first time in years, trying to get her brain to compute what happened. But the only thing she could muster was a blank expressionless shell roaming about the house in search of answer.
Finally, as she stared silently at the same yellowed hues folding into a landscape of gradient burnt orange hues gently ebbing into the swaying trees in the pocket of the horizon, she inhaled the crisping air and took stock of her senses. She felt nothing. No sorrow. No regret. No apprehension. Absolutely Nothing.
The blackened clouds which overcast her existence had cleared. It was a whole New World for her to explore unencumbered and unchained without compromise.
“It’s going to be a new life. A better one. And it’s all mine.”
She pulled a blanket around her, smiled and drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow would be a new day.
(C) Suzanne Rudd Hamilton 2025
SUZANNE RUDD HAMILTON 