[ WP ] Write something that makes me smile

The old man stood in the open field, located specifically at somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It was empty save for meadow, sky and a single gravestone. Christine, it read, a single word etched into the smooth rock. This old man stared lazily at the gravestone, for his blue, cloudy eyes were n't really looking at anything. His hair shook slightly as a gentle gust came and pulled his peach beret off his head and onto the grass, but apart from that, the old man was still. His cane had been resting on the one spot for so long it had begun to dig into the earth. 
 
 `` Christine,'' he whispered from his frail mouth, the words coming out hoarse, yet beautifully melancholy if only for the weight with which he treasured the name. She had lived a happy life, he liked to think, yet despite the contentedness they had found in each other, he wished he could have given her more. He was only a boy when they had met, it was n't any sort of perfect romance or even a tale of star-crossed lovers. Not anything of the sort. They had shared one class together in at the start high school, but no, not even there did their story begin. She sat at almost the opposite side of the room from him, with her group friends, while he... he sat in the middle, not a social outcast, but not one of the cool kids. It was only towards the end of senior year they had gotten to know each other. 
 They had both found themselves waiting at the bus stop, having left a friends party at around the same time. It was cold out, but unfortunately, or fortunately, this lost boy was a little too drunk to have realized he was supposed to offer his jacket to her. 
 
 `` Are n't you going to offer me your jacket, Eddie?'' She'd asked him, in a light-hearted fashion. 
 
 `` But then I'd be cold.'' He told her, not catching that she'd said it simply to break the awkward silence. She looked at him, with one of those'You're so daft' kind of looks. Silence. He remembered. She had just turned her head to the street, anticipating the buses arrival any moment. That was when he had first looked at her. Not looked like he glanced past and she happened to be in somewhere in the frame of his eyes, but looked like truly looked at the girl who stood beside him. 
 
 The gravestone grew blurry as a single tear floated into the eye of the old man. She had been as beautiful the day he saw him to the day he had held her hand while the doctors explained what they had found, and every day in between. Even the days they fought, like the one time he had to sleep at Paul, his friend's house, because Christine had been furious about his inability to help her around the house. They both worked, yet everyday he would come home and sit on the couch with a beer while watching the game while she would come home and start cooking dinner. Her food... her food was home. Recipes passed down from her mother to her that remained the only traces of the little town they had grown up in after they'd moved to the city. 
 
 One day she had had enough, and told him that if he did n't cook dinner or at the very least help cook it, he could n't sleep in this house. Being the prideful, and stupid, and selfish man he was, he'd just walked out of the house. 
 That was the first night they spent away from each other after being married, it was n't the last. It was n't a perfect marriage, but- the old man looked at the gravestone and chuckled a little, tears now streaming down his face from both eyes- 
 `` Perfection is overrated,'' she would always tell him. 
 It really was, he thought to himself. His face a complete mess from the tears layered on his skin, and his eyes red on the edges, but he was smiling now. 
 Smiling because he remembered that one time she had introduced him to Pearl Jam and how he had n't listened to another band's music for almost 2 weeks, and that one time she had played piano for him in the dead of night when he'd snuck himself into her house while her parents were away, and he... he'd just listened to her, and watched her fingers make some of the most beautiful sounds he'd heard, simply because of the weight with which he had loved the person creating them. And the night he had proposed to her, under the night sky, in front of the bus stop that he had first met her at. And then the old man was crying; crying because he remembered when the doctor had explained to them her arthritis, and the solemn look on her whenever she sat at the piano and struggled to make it sing for her. Crying because she had never looked as happy as he remembered since that day and crying because of the night years later that he had found her collapsed at the doorway, because of the morning after when the doctor told them what they had found in her breasts, and the months after spent sitting beside a hospital bed and today. 
 
 Today. He stood staring at her grave. Unable to see under the tears piled on top his eyes. He reached inside his jacket pocket, the jacket she had gotten him, and told him `` Now you wo n't have to let me freeze'' as she'd handed it ove, and he pulled from this pocket a small musical box. One that he had made for her, that played one of her composition, the one she had written during high-school for a music class and the one she first played to him moments before he'd first told her he'd loved her. He held the little musical box, winded it up and listened to the most beautiful sounds he had ever heard if simply for the weight with which he longed to hear her play them for him one more time. And he took off his jacket, and whispered `` I'm a few years too late, but you really should n't be waiting out like this in the cold,'' as he placed the folded jacket neatly in front of the gravestone. 
 
 Edit: A he for a she
