[ WP ] A young man stands alone in a cemetery .

He stood looking down at the tombstone where his caring wife's name was neatly chiseled. The tears trickled down his cheek and dropped onto his tweed winter coat. Cold winter air formed whiskey clouds with each of his exhalations, but no one was in the graveyard to be bothered by the smell. Their anniversary was the one day of the year he would visit her. 
 
 Looking back on the years they spent together was always painful, but he felt she deserved at least that much. She made pumpkin pie every fall when the leaves began to change from green to bright yellow announcing that the cold was approaching and the days were getting shorter. They would sit in the dark on Halloween, telling ghost stories while they avoided the trick or treaters. She would even let him watch football and drink all day on Thanksgiving, without a single sarcastic remark about how she could really use some help in the kitchen. Every other day of the year he did everything in his power not to think of her, but today was the exception. 
 
 She's been dead for a long time, but he still regrets all the times he was cruel to her. After all, she was a wonderful wife and he was a horrible husband. He was a drunk, a gambler, and a cheat, while she was a nurse, a provider, and a saint. 
 
 From the moment he carried her across the threshold, their marriage began to sour. He would come home drunk and she would say nothing at all. He would spend his whole check at the races and she would say nothing at all. She even caught him fooling around and still she said nothing at all. Instead, she was good to him. She always nursed him back to health after a night of drinking. She worked two jobs to pay the bills, and she forgave his every transgression. 
 
 Her inability to treat him with anything but love made him feel humiliated. She had no right to make him feel less than perfect and her eyes said everything. He could see all the disappointment in them. By their seventh anniversary, he could no longer meet her gaze, he could no longer bare her kindness, and he decided he would no longer allow her to make him feel that way. 
 
 He did n't use poison, that would have been to easy to detect if they did an autopsy. He could n't put his hands on her, for she would surely bruise, sending him straight to prison. He struggled to come up with a clever way to make her death look like an accident. Finally, he decided that she should trip going down the stairs. It was a stupid idea now that he thinks about it. She could have lived and he would have been stuck taking care of her. 
 
 On the first day of Spring she took a tumble, never to return. 
 
 Now years later as he stands over her grave on what would have been their fiftieth anniversary. He sees how good he had it when she was still around. She never stopped him from doing anything he wanted. She put up with his addictions and bad habits without a word. Most men dream of having that kind of freedom, but he could n't see it at the time. All he saw was the disappointment in her eyes that screamed at him even when she said nothing at all. 
 
 Full of regret he begins to walk away from the wife he never cherished. And as he does every year, he takes one last look back and asks, `` What can I do to make it up to you?'' 
 
 Every year her reply is nothing at all.
