Goodnight Kiss

Sheila was always guilty she’d left Alan behind.

“Little Granddad” she called him, laughing at his real ale and Sunday lunches.

She’d last spoken to him months after hearing about his cancer, traveling from London to see him and his partner David in their house at the forest edge.

“Do you want my old laptop?” she’d asked, enthusing about sharing websites and forwarding attachments.

“We haven’t even got a phone,” he’d said, sad and polite amongst ticking clocks and dark paintings, cat purring in his lap. “Couldn’t you visit?”

Now he was dead.

In the chapel yard, after the service, there was no noise but the splashing of tiny cat bells and slow knock of wood as the morris danced her brother’s final processional.

Dressed in green waistcoats and breeches, white stockings to their knees, her dead brother’s side danced with solemn faces, two rows facing, concussion rattling them every time their sticks met.

“It’s not what people think,” said David, voice wavering. “The morris. It’s not about keeping the past alive. It’s about lamenting the past that’s gone. It’s a final goodnight kiss.”

Crying, far from the city, watching the final morris, Sheila finally understood.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.