The squeeking of the rocking chair seemed to fill the room.

Her thoughts were blurry, more and more every day. She didn’t always find her things, didn’t always recognize familiar faces, didn’t know how to pick her words anymore… But her mind still turned crystal clear every time her eyes met that picture.

Oh my love… she murmured turning the frame to catch the late afternoon’s light coming through the window.

To anyone else, the portrait would have seemed completely uninterresting. Mundane. To her, this tiny piece of her past was the only island where she could still set foot in the ocean of forgetness that had covered her world, slowly but surely.

They were barefoot on Tenerife beach…  He was holding her by the waste, and they were both laughing when the camera had immortalized this moment of pure happiness. She didn’t laugh much anymore, but when she looked at that picture, she could still hear his chuckles, and she giggled alone in her senior home living room.

Oh, how she had loved him! And how he had loved her back…

She didn’t remember how they had met. But she didn’t care… All she needed stood in this image. Their bright smiles, their sparkling eyes, the obvious bond that seemed indestructible back then.

She remembered the feeling of his lips on her neck, just before the shot. The tickling had forced her into a burst of laughter so communicative that he had instantly joined in…  She remembered how they could stare at each other for hours, in silence. Silence was never heavy in his presence… It was a moment of grace, and his eyes spoke to her a language only they understood.

His eyes… His deep blue eyes… Still catching her breath, now lying on the sand, in his arms, while the lense had turned away, she had told him how the Tenerife Sea looked bland in comparison. It was cheesy, but he had rolled over her pinning her to the ground, to gaze at her lovingly. She remembered how she thought she wanted this sight to be the last she ever saw…

And to this day, it was one of the last clear souvenirs she had managed to cling to.

Rocking back and forth, she looked at her knotted fingers holding the frame…  Whose hands were those? Where was she? Where was he?….

Holding her on Tenerife beach, he had sworn to always be there… Where was he?…

Staring out the window, her mind slipped away with the the evening’s sunset. Until their next meeting on Tenerife’s shore…

In response to November Notes Writing Challenge by  Sarah Doughty of Heartstring Eulogies and Rosema from A Reading Writer .