I can’t tell you how much being with Rahmira changed my life. Three years ago, she changed my life for the last time. She changed it by going for a walk and never coming back.

We were married in a Church on a Saturday afternoon. Funny that. We’d talked about doing it in the registry office for so long, but I guess it was the pressure from her mum that finally changed our minds. What a beautiful day that was. It was one of those autumn days when the sun baked away the chilly fragments of the morning, leaving a fresh fragrance in the air. I’ll always remember it. Not just because one is obliged to remember their wedding day, but because it truly represented the point in my life when everything started to change, and over the next five years I found myself happily incarcerated in love and security.

Then she left. It was a Sunday, and again it was a beautiful day, so hot it burnt the sweat off my brow. I was tending the garden. There was a joint of beef in the oven and two hungry kids playing upstairs. Rahmira had just finished preparing the vegetables and came out to see me. She looked so beautiful. She was wearing that red blouse which matched her hair. Her eyes were mysterious, shrouded by brown sunglasses that merged with her freckled face. She said she was going for a quick walk down the lane before lunch. I offered to go with her, to which she replied with her last words,

“You’d better keep an eye on the monsters”.

She turned and walked away from me. I didn’t even kiss her goodbye, or tell her that I loved her. But you don’t, do you, not when you know you’re going to see her again in twenty minutes. We take everything for granted in this world.

There was no note, no clue, and no explanation why she vanished. My first feelings were for our kids. They needed their mother, being so young; one was five, the other three. They didn’t understand what was going on around them. The constant visits by men in uniforms must have confused them, along with the constant uncontrollable moods from Daddy. To them, all was normal except one thing; mummy was absent from their lives.

I did it all, placed posters on shop windows, made appeals in local newspapers, did interviews on local radio. I even went round door to door asking people if they’d seen or heard anything of my beloved Rahmira. I felt like paying my taxes had all been for nothing. It was hope that got me through, hope that one day I would get a response, hope that I would find a clue, a reason, or maybe even find her. It never came, but the hope continued.     

A year passed. My kids kept asking where mummy was. What could I tell them? What could I tell myself? I couldn’t write her off as being ‘dead’, and I couldn’t write off the marriage as being over. I couldn’t move on. I couldn’t mourn the loss of a failed marriage, or even a dead wife. With no answers, I continued to try to find the answers. I continued to hope.

The human race’s primal fear is of the unknown. When I used to watch horror films, it wasn’t the violence or the sight of blood which scared me. It was always the fear of the unknown presence lurking in the darkness that affected me. This fear of the unknown is the thing that hope must wage war against. The belief that one day I would finally know what happened, and how and why it happened, remained my life’s focus for three years. It developed to the point where I cared more about dispelling the unknown, than seeing Rahmira again.

Yet in all this time, I forgot many things. I forgot how to be a father to my increasingly demanding kids. I forgot how to be an employee. I forgot how to be a red-blooded male. I forgot how to live. Why did I forget? I forgot because hope prevented me from remembering. Hope has kept me from living, but now its time to live again. I must bury my wife, by burying hope. I owe it to my children, and to myself.

Hope can be your friend, but it can also be your enemy. You might think I’m being pessimistic. You might think I’ve given up, but I haven’t given up. I’ve started again. Each day is still hard, but it’s getting better. To end the risk of cursing hope to the furthest reaches of hell, may I state that this is just one view. This is what I’ve chosen to do. With others it may well be different. And to you, dear reader, my final thought remains; don’t be afraid to use hope, but don’t be afraid to give it up either.