Rainy Day Eileen by Brittany Nickel (children's books read aloud TXT) 📕

Today is a new day – so different from all other days, and yet so familiar to the day before.

Days pass and months come, forming into years and then on even further to decades. I am old now; my skin weathered, and my back crooked. My fingers knot from the pains of arthritis, and stairs have become my enemy. Time has made me gnarled, but resistant to the more frivolous trials of life. There are some trials, though, that are immense and solemn reminders that age has not taken away my spirit or soul.

I loved a woman for forty-five years. Eileen was a beautiful girl. Ah, I remember when I first met her. Eileen was so young… she wore a silver ribbon in her chestnut hair. I was at a park, but it had begun to rain, and so we all ran to shelter. When I had looked back, I saw my Eileen for the first time. Her pink dress twirled around her body as she spun in circles, holding her hands up to the rain. The smile on her face was tilted up to the sky to welcome the falling droplets – and they did fall, right onto her face, sliding off that beautiful skin. When the rest of us ran from that downfall, Eileen saw it as something beautiful – a way to rejoice.

Eileen brought me to life, from the day I met her in high school, to the day we retired, and from then on. When I was afraid, she was courageous. When I was sad, she was the sunshine to my darkness. The love that Eileen showed me and all others around her made me a new man – made me a better person. For her, I would have done anything, but she never asked for a single material thing. Eileen was content with simply being alive, and having the love of the people around her. She was the sweetest woman I’ve ever met.

She was so full of life, and even after we had children, I could still occasionally go out and find her spinning in the rain. I would smile at her from the porch, and Eileen would gesture for me to join her, but I would always refuse. The pure, innocent joy that Eileen so obviously felt from the cool, falling raindrops seemed to be something I didn’t think I could ever reach; I couldn’t fathom it. Eileen would shrug at my refusal, never taking it to heart, and always continue twirling in the rain – hands outstretched to the sky, even when they had begun to wrinkle and age.

Cancer took my Eileen away from me. I sat by her bedside for months, watching her eyes become distant, and her hair fall away. After a time, she stopped grasping my hand in return, and always had her eyes closed. The chemotherapy was so hard on my Eileen, so hard… I cried for her pain when she had no tears to spare, and I prayed – please God – help her through this. My Eileen shouldn’t have to suffer through such a horrid time, not my Eileen – not the good, pure, sweet Eileen that I have loved for all these years.

Then, one morning, I awoke beside her hospital bed to find that she was not breathing. My Eileen, my poor Eileen, was taken away from me.

Eileen’s funeral was hard on the kids and I, but we tried to stay strong for her. Halfway through the services, it began to rain, and I pulled out the slip of paper that my dearest Eileen had held in her hands as she died. The nurse said that Eileen had asked her to write it for her a few months back, and Eileen had held onto it ever since.

“My dearest Harold, please let the rain wash away your tears. Remember all the love we shared through all those years, and don’t let it be forgotten. I have one request, my love, and that is that you dance in the rain… please, just once, feel what I felt in those droplets. All those years that you watched me from inside and refused to dance with me – please, now, dance in my memory.”

I am old now, and I do not have a silver ribbon in my gray hair. I walked away from the service, out from the shelter of trees and umbrellas, into the center of the grass where the rain could fall freely down on me. Though my joints were stiff and sore, and though I could not raise my arms very high, I held up my wrinkled, arthritic hands to the sky. The cool drops fell on my skin, and for the first time since my Eileen died, I felt young again.

Then, with the slow speed of such an old man, I danced. The rain fell down, and soaked me to my core – but I twirled and spun underneath that falling rain, keeping my hands outstretched to welcome those droplets the entire time.

I danced in the rain, for my Eileen… I danced in the rain.

Publication Date: 10-03-2009

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