Aveline

As she watched the small waves crash onto the shore of Lake Michigan, the sound of loud traffic from the Mackinac Bridge broke her concentration from a purposeless daydream.  She looked upwards into the sky, eyes closed, and took a deep breath, welcoming the bittersweet scent of the spring air.  She looked back into the water, noticing a white swan floating about the lake, riding the waves.  She admired its beauty for the first time since childhood.

Aveline reminisced the first time she had come here as a child.  She was with her father, running along Lake Michigan’s edge as she became mesmerised by a swan’s pure white beauty.  She held her father’s hand tightly and exclaimed, “Look, Daddy!”  He knelt down beside her as he told her all about swans.  She didn’t understand any of it, but her childlike wonderment kept her fascination.

As she stood in nostalgia the swan abruptly flew off into the deep blue horizon.  She wished she could fly off on a whim like the swan, without a care in the world for what comes next.  She envied the swan, swimming as it would on the lake, and taking flight without any indication as to why, or where it was going.

Aveline turned around and walked through the rocks and high grass back to her jeep.  It was time she got back home.  Whilst she drove across the bridge she had to help herself from being distracted by Lake Michigan’s sunset.  She reached Mackinac City and finished the rest of her drive home.

Sitting on her bed now, Aveline picks up the framed photo of her father off her nightstand beside her.  She always admired his sharp handsomeness in his army Dress Blues uniform.  People always call him a hero, but she doesn’t believe that, because what’s a hero?  She thinks of him more as a martyr, dying for what he believed in — freedom, patriotism, and God.  She shed salty tears as she reminisced more memories of him.  How she missed him so.  It’s been seven years since she lost him in Afghanistan, but she can never get over it.  Such a loving, compassionate, gentle, loving man was taken away from her, and she never stops mourning.  Everyone tells her to move on, but how can you move on?  She doesn’t know if she ever will.

Aveline sets the photo down and lies down underneath her blankets, reminiscing still.  It’s hard to imagine that he’s gone.  She and her father both shared a love for nature, going on trips to Yosemite National Park, Yellowstone…  Now every time she stops to admire nature, she reminisces of her father and weeps.  How can such a peaceful man be taken from this dark world?  She would never understand.  Perhaps because she doesn’t want to.