Jeremy-Part Seven

(the final chapter)

I watch my children playing on the beach. Danny is our first born. He is ten years old now. Sandy hair and the most piercing blue eyes, just like his namesake. He jumps into the sea, oblivious to my thoughts.

Our other child is quite the little madam. She wears pink all the way from the bows in her perfect little pigtails to the shoes on her perfect little feet.

It took us a long time to think of a name for her. Almost a year. We tried Katherine, Isabella, Louisi-Anne and a whole host of other names. But finally we realised we knew the perfect name all along.
We called her Evangilina.

I turn to Jeremy, he may have aged but his eyes are still exactly the same. His fine wine voice keeps the children awake late into the night with his fantastic story's.

"Quickly now, your dinners getting cold", I turn to see my Mother, addressing us from the lighthouse window.

You see, I couldn't go. After Danny's death I realised how precious family is. I couldn't live that far away from them.

We go inside, hand in hand with Jeremy and Evangilina. Danny races ahead.

We walk up the lighthouse stairs. I watch my Father take Evangilina on his lap, he's so good with the kids.
Danny starts wolfing down his tea, I don't know what I'll do with that child, he thinks he has to do everything the fastest.

I continue up the stairs to my old bedroom, I walk round to the jagged hole in the glass. I never had it repaired. I left it there to remind me, when I'm feeling blue, to cherish what I have, because it can disappear like a flame in the wind.
I look through the hole and I think about my life. The ups and the downs and the everything. And I realise.

Life is like a fine wine, to be sipped, and savoured.