The Spark

He gently pushed the door with his sinewy arm. The hinges creaked, trying unsuccessfully to offer some resistance. He slowly entered his room. The curtains were drawn. The fading light of evening made the room even darker. The darkness in his room was merely a shadow of the darkness that had been tormenting him since the last few years. He wasn’t blind, he had 20/20 vision. But it was the things on his wall that numbed his mind...
A photograph of him and his schoolmates proudly displaying the gold medals they’d won in the national interschool hockey tournament...a photograph of his parents proudly embracing him after the achievement...and then a date he had carved into the wall. He ran his fingers over the engraving and looked down at his wheelchair. A storm of sorrow and pain raged in his mind. That fateful day...his brand new suit...the small velvet-coated box in his hand...his widowed mother looking forward to happy times...the torrential rains... the failed brakes...the broken barrier of the railroad crossing...opening his eyes in a hospital bed surrounded by his college buddies...they seemed to be etched into his mind just like the deep carving in his wall. He remembered her accompanying him to his parents’ graves, her hand on his shoulder...
Her...he remembered her...her presence seemed to inject fresh hope into him...she was there right beside him at that very moment, wearing his ring on her finger, her hand on his shoulder...
He turned around slowly, his wheelchair wheels squeaking a bit, and looked into her eyes. She was the spark that ignited the cold, black coals of gloom and despair surrounding him and provided a fire...a fire that gave him warmth...a fire that gave him light. This fire breathed life into him, and she was the one who he lived for...