December 1980. A Much older, and still blonde, Amie walked through the quiet and almost forgotten church-yard. Even if most of the city was mourning, none of them knew of this sacred place. This one place of sanctuary from years, and life times, gone by.
No gangs of children were cutting through the grassy space. No girls were finding moment of quiet reverie among the headstones. No lovers were meeting. But two were about to say their final good-byes.
She walked though the familiar space, even snow covered, with ease. She knew this place. Even now she knew it. Walking quietly she stopped in front of a just as familiar relic.
“’ow are you luv? Still lonely girl?” she placed her hand on top of the headstone marked Eleanor Rigby, “Right now…me too.”
Settling, she leaned her self against the frozen stone, giving up on her own strength and allowing someone else hold her up. Hours ago, everything had crashed down. As cliché as it was, the world had changed one early morning.
She let herself go, feeling every break saying good-bye forever caused, and falling into it. “God John!” she called out in grief. The tears burned down her face and sobs choked her chest. The physical pain never once equalling the feeling of her heart breaking. Of everyone’s heart breaking. She never once mourned losing him, since she never really had, until they had all lost him. A flash in time and everything had chanced.
Amie cried into her hands. For the boy and girl who had shared their time here together, for that broken hearted girl. For the star that was pulled down. For the millions who felt the same loss as she did, they had all loved him. For the now husband-less wife and father-less child. But most of all, for the life that was now over.
She cried until she was sure her eyes had dried up, and that her heart had burst. It was the strange smell of cigarette smoke that made her raise her head. The scent that her senses would never forget. But no where in sight was the source. The only tacks in the snow were hers.
“Okay…I get it John. ‘Stop yer blubbering’,” she wiped away at her face with her gloves, pushing off from the stone. Giving it one more pat along the chiselled and warn top, she picked up her walking again.
Only a few steps away stood the willow, which looked just as fragile as she felt in the cold air. She ran her hand along the frost lined bark of the tall willow, searching for that one spot, “But nobody wants to know him, they can see that he’s just a fool….” She shook her head sadly, a sobbing laugh breaking from her lungs, “…well on the way, head in a cloud the man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud, but nobody ever hears him.” She shook her head again letting her fingers traced along the scars marked into the bare tree’s flesh, “I think I heard you, once.”
She let the smile form her lips, remembering the cocking smirks shy moments that had filled the yard and her youth. She could almost see him and his guitar case leaning against one of the far off trees, cigarette dangling from his fingers, “Good-Bye John.”
She may not have seen him for years, but it was just then that she had said the good-bye. The little blonde girl had now waved good-bye to the teddy boy.
