“Time
heals all wounds.” To this, he subscribed. Still, the long process must play
through. The old man would allow her time, supporting his granddaughter with
understanding love.
He
ate a Spartan meal of half a dried apple washed down with three-quarters cup of
hot tea.
Busying
himself around the small cabin doing “nothing”, he allowed some necessary
solitude.
As
mid-morning finally defeated the piercing chill of mountain early day, Gramps
donned his elk-hide coat, badger-skin cap and grabbed a woolen blanket from the
back of his old rocking chair for his trek across the mountainside; exiting the
warm cabin to the clean freshness of the altitude, he inhaled a deep breath.
The assault upon his senses cleared his head of threatening evil-demon dread;
he started toward the “place”, the Secret Mountain Meadow.
A
half mile from their rustic-rough abode, he spied her bright yellow flowing
dress against the verdant green of mountain meadow alive with cascades of wild
flowers, blue Columbine.
Pretty
as a picture! The spectacle and vision of his love and ward brought a smile to
his lips.
As
he got closer, her “little girl” playful personality betrayed her deep
emotional loss; she had braided a circle of blue Columbine flowers into a
wreath which she had fashioned as a halo adorning her platinum hair eliciting
his silent conclusion: Just: Beautiful! Inside---and…out!
Approaching
the girl, a deep resounding guitar chord greeted his ears, the tempo slow,
foreboding; reflecting, he realized, the girl’s abject despair as she struggled
for relief from the very depths of grief which would not, could not, emerge;
not yet. He savored a deep breath.
“Coming
over the yonder rise, Darling,” he began after sitting beside her and
comforting her goose-bump bare arms with the colorful Hudson Bay blanket, “I
caught sight of your yellow dress and heard you strumming. Among the emerald
meadow interspersed with myriad colorful flowers and that copse of Colorado blue
spruce trees serving as the background, you definitely are ‘Pretty as a perfect
summer picture’.” He smiled as she gave him a loving gaze-embrace.
Then,
Gramps put his arm around her thin shoulders and gently kissed her wind-cooled
forehead, trying to offer comfort, adding in a slight tease, “I ‘love’ your
perfect halo, too.”
“Oh!
Grandpa!” She cried in surrendering, raw, defeated emotion. “How can I
survive?”
He
held the girl tightly, then, and said, simply, “I love you, Darling. I will
always love you!”
They
sat as she cried away bitter sorrow’s evil loss; he soothed her pain holding
her close.
Under
a high noon sun in a cerulean clear abyss, the girl strummed a bit more
cheerful beat.
Gramps
looked at her beautiful face, grinning; her blue eyes twinkled, and, she nearly
smiled
“One
day, my dear girl, I know you will find cause to smile, again,” the old man
whispered.
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