She crouched feeling the familiar pop in her back as she stooped low enough to reach the dead roses covering the headstone. Her large knuckled, knotted hands, trembled just slightly as she brushed aside the dry red roses to reveal the inscription. The letters were covered with lichen and dried mud but remained readable: “Joyce Lynn Hutchinson, Beloved Wife, Born June 18, 1932, Died November 11 1955, Age 23.”

Joyce had promised herself that if she reached her 80th birthday, she would return to her “gravesite”. Today was the day. She remembered standing in the first snow of the winter, quivering despite her long brown overcoat, scarf wound around her neck, her blond hair concealed under a hat, watching from a distance as her coffin had been lowered into the ground.

She took a moment to wonder about the life she would have had. The past 57 years had treated her well. She chose two of the dead roses carefully placing them in a tissue as she stood. Slowly she smiled saying a silent final good-bye to her old life before she turned walking away, clutching the only thing that remained from her past.