“His wife just died, the poor thing.” “Really? What was it from?” “I heard it was some rare disease.” “I heard it wasn’t expected.” “Poor thing, they were only married for ten months.”

            Himchan just kept walking. He didn’t hold his head up high but he didn’t shy either. Death was a part of life, just like gossip and hurt and all the nasty things in between. But like everything in life, things got better and things faded away. That was what he was counting on.

            The words and the stares of the people passing by him merely rolled off his back because he didn’t care. There was no longer a point in caring when she had already been taken away. It had happened, like the whispers on the streets said, too suddenly. One day she was fine, the next she was underneath blankets, in a tangled mess of drips and needles.

            “Oh look at him, he’s out already. Shouldn’t he be given more time to mourn?” “Maybe he’s a heartless one. Maybe her death didn’t sadden him.” “Oh stop it! Why would you say something like that about such a nice young man?”

            The cancer was found too late and by then it had metathesized and spread all over her body. The doctors placed her immediately into treatment and it had been a crucial fifteen days before everything collapsed and she was left as just a shell, and then left to die.

            Himchan looked down the streets, and sat down on the ledge of a potted bush. They had moved into the new neighborhood after the marriage as a way to start anew, to get ready for potential children. They had been so excited, and started making plans.

            They had plans to restore the house, to turn it into someplace where the entire family would want to keep for generations. “We’re going to have to take pictures, every moment of our children’s lives will go up on the walls, like a timeline for us to travel by. We’re going to need to have kids first. And we’re going to enjoy our first honeymoon year.” She always planned things in reverse order because the future always came first. There was no such thing as what if it didn’t happen.

            But now he knew. Now Himchan has no more dreams. The last few months had made him so rooted in the moment, so instilled in the past, that to him there no longer was any future. He couldn’t think of how to move on, to go forth when everything that he had planned had seemed so real, so tangible, and now absolutely unattainable.

            Plans and dreams, he now realized, is all a mask to hide the unknown. It’s a veil against the scary entity of ‘I don’t know.’ And that in itself was disconcerting. When you know what you would do in the future, everything seems secure. The now was just a brief moment of time where you could make memories, but each one is a stepping stone to that dream. And once that dream is achieved, it’s time to make new goals.

            But now Himchan was lost. Without her, he didn’t know what else he was going to do. To live in the moment was too painful because each passing second only reminded him that her death had been a week ago. One hundred sixty-nine hours, twelve minutes and how ever many seconds ago. And that was a raw grief.

            “Somebody should go talk to him.” “Look, he’s sitting there again.” “He doesn’t know what to do with himself. Poor dear, to lose a love so young in life, it’ll be a miracle if he doesn’t turn into an old cynic.” “What’re we going to do?”

            Himchan turned away from the prying eyes and looked out at the sky. He didn’t quite believe in Heaven, because if there were a Heaven, Hell wouldn’t be on earth, but somewhere unreachable as well. He knew the old adage that she wouldn’t want him to suffer, wouldn’t want him to be unhappy. But he also knew that chances are, she didn’t know.

            When she had been tied to the hospital bed, she only spoke of the blissful not knowing, the carefree disappearance of the pain. She never spoke of her spirit watching over him, and so he didn’t think it would happen. But nonetheless, he stared at the sky and willed himself to imagine her up there. She fit.

            She fit in the sky, with the light that radiated from her before, radiating now, but reaching a broader expanse. She was the sun, he decided, not an angel but the sun. And he was going to let her light up his day, brighten up his way.

            He stood up and stretched. No dreams yet, no future plans yet. First, he had to get through the present. But to do that, he had to live. 

it's a bit short but I like the way it happened