The Ashes in the Urn - Part 3

The next morning, I woke up to hear birds chirping through the window. It was a sunny Sunday summer morning. The spot beside me was empty – Steven had left early for work. I walked over to the vanity mirror in our bathroom and examined my reflection. My satin nightgown was a little bit crinkled and my hair needed to be brushed, but other than that, I looked alright. My shoulder length sandy hair blocked my eyesight as I brushed my teeth. I slipped on my cozy pink slippers and grabbed the phone. It was 10:38 AM. Roman might still be sleeping, but I decided to try his cell anyways. There was no answer – it went straight to voicemail. 

As I got dressed, I stared at my body. I didn’t like the way it looked anymore. Steven and I got married when I was twenty-two, right out of college. He was three years older than me and already in law school by the time that I graduated. One year later, Steven took over his father’s practise and I gave birth to Roman. Now, I’m almost forty years old. Sometimes I wonder about all the hours Steve puts in at the office.
Avoiding the thought, I headed downstairs to fish the urn out of the back of the shoe closet. It didn’t feel warm anymore, the way it did yesterday after sitting in the blazing sun all afternoon. Instead, it was stone cold with ragged edges that would cut you if you grasped them too tightly. Suddenly, I remembered a strange dream that I had had that night. I was sitting in a chair next to a hospital bed. I couldn’t see who was in the bed because they were surrounded by a stunning white light, but I heard the beeping of the IV pump and the whir of the mechanical ventilator. I felt a strange sensation of helplessness and when I tried to stand up from the chair, I couldn’t. The only time in my life that I had ever felt that way before was when my dad was sick.
While I drove, I thought about who the remains in my backseat belonged to. It couldn’t have been someone the book lady loved dearly, because surely she wouldn’t forget such an important loss. I decided that they must belong to some great aunt or other distant relative that the book lady didn’t know very well. This thought comforted me, numbing my sensitive heart.
I pulled up to the Victorian-style home with the enormous driveway. It looked the exact same as it did yesterday, minus the tables and the book lady sitting in a lawn chair. I stumbled up the driveway carrying the hefty urn and set it down as I knocked on the golden oak door. After a few minutes, there was no answer so I knocked again. I left the urn on the front doorstep and decided to see if there was a back door. As I walked through the side yard of the home, I noticed a red, blue and white real estate sign that read “SOLD”. It must have been taken down to discourage burglars. There were no cars in the driveway, so maybe the homeowners were out for the day. I turned around to walk back to my car and gasped as I saw a face staring at me from the yard next door.
“Oh my God, you really startled me!” I said to the old man.
“The neighbours moved out yesterday. They sold off the last of their things and drove off in a U-Haul,” he replied.
“Oh… that’s okay. It wasn’t important anyways,” I answered as I looked at the ground and hurriedly walked towards my car. The way that the man was staring at me made me feel very uncomfortable. Something about him reminded me of the patients that I had cared for while I was in college doing a clinical rotation on a psychiatric ward.
As I drove off, I realized that I had left the red urn on the front doorstep of the house. I didn’t go back for it.