"Attic"

She went up the stairs… it wasn't easy for her, climbing all the way up, but she felt it had to be done today. The task she had set herself was not an easy one, but what in her life had been really easy?

At her age she had experienced many happy as well as very sad times. But life went on and on and it was not up to her to decide when it would be time to move on to a different plane….. and therefore, up she climbed, up to the attic of the old house, up to a lot of long buried memories she had to sort out before moving onwards.

Finally having reached the attic, she had to pause to get her breath. Settling down in the old wicker chair that had been banned from the downstairs living room ages ago she looked around, letting her thoughts go and waiting for a kind of sign where to start today's task.

After some minutes she stood up and decidedly went to a locked cupboard standing in a dark corner. From her pocket she took a rusty key and unlocked the door. On the shelves were a number of carton boxes. She looked at them and a smile softened her old and wrinkled face.

The boxes were labeled with names  … Men's names….

Taking out the box labeled Paul, she went back to her chair and started reading the papers that were in the box…. Time went backwards and she felt young again…but reading the last letter, she was weeping, tears falling down on the paper in her hand.

It had been such a marvelous encounter, opening up possibilities she had never known there might be, but all of a sudden he had disappeared from her life…….. leaving only one message.. 'it has been sent'…….. she remembered the picture of the wooden bowl with the special pattern he'd promised her.

but it never came…..