A Special Place

A Special Place

I brushed away the snow from the top of the rusty Iron Gate and as I placed my hand onto the latch, i felt a cold spasm running down my arm. I looked up and saw the old stone building with its beautiful stained glass windows and the cross on the top of the bell tower. I felt the cold winter’s breeze brush against my bare cheek as I opened the gate onto the snow covered path. I followed the path some of the way down and then I stopped in front of a big piece of smooth pale stone with a miniature cross on the top. Written on every side of the stone were names of my ancestors most of whom I had never known. I went round to one of the sides and saw written on the side a name that I did know, a name of someone who used to bring joy to me, my grandfather. I knelt down and brushed away the snow that lay at the foot of the stone and laid the holly covered wreath on the ground. I waited there for a moment and as I waited I could feel my eyes filling with tears but then my mother said a prayer, as we did every year when we visited the vault. As I stood up I glanced to my left and found myself looking over the stone wall and into the park next door. It didn’t look much like a park any more, it was covered in snow and the swings and the slides looked like they hadn’t been used for years and then I saw the old park bench resting against the opposite wall looking like a sad willow starting to droop with old age and the bark looked like it had been through everything and seen things that no human had seen. I thought of the times when I was a small child sitting upon the bench with my grandfather playing games. I felt an urge to start crying but before I could let anything out I was sucked into my past and there I was in one of my old games that I used to play with my grandfather. I suddenly felt the child within me willing me to go into the game so I allowed it to pull me in.