My sweet, sweet Mary. I know our lives over the years haven’t always been easy. And my god the years have been plenty. I wrote you this because I have a feeling that it won’t be long now, and I wanted you to know that I am sorry for the things that I put you through for the many years at the start of our marriage. I lied for a start and in other ways I treated you so, so badly. But still you stayed with me, perhaps I thought at some points through fear or for the fact that I was the first man that stole your heart. I love you though and always have even through sometimes I didn’t show that love in the right way. You was always there for me and stood by me. I want to take you back if I can before it’s time for me to go, to the year of 1989. Am sure you remember it well, even though I hoped over time you would forget as it was just another day that I treated you badly. It was hot, and as you were aware I never could handle the heat. You always did say that I would be better off living in the Artic. But there we were in the car coming back from your friends wedding, the one that I shouted about the whole morning about not wanting to go. Just another example of how I did you wrong. You had had a few drinks, I didn’t blame you, caught up in the moment of being a bridesmaid and having fun. On the way home you said you wanted to do something fun, something that you had never done before, just the two of us. We drove past farmers fields with the wheat growing feet and feet above the ground. “Let’s run through, set up in the middle and stay there for a while, just where is quite.” You had said. I thought it was the most stupid idea I had ever heard and told you so if I remember correctly all the way home. I bet you thought that I had forgotten that, like the many other times I had treated you so wrongly. I haven’t though, haven’t forgotten a single time that I did wrong by you. But that one played on my mind the most. So that bring me to my point of writing this, I want you to be free now, I want you to be free to go and run in that field. Run through that wheat and do the many other things that throughout the years I wouldn’t let you. Now is your time, before like me it becomes too late. I wish that I could have said this too you in person but, and I don’t blame you but you have stopped visiting me now. I am going to leave this letter with my other belongings and by the time you read this I will no longer be around. I hope you will one day think of me fondly but until then, be free and live well. Much love always George A tear rolled down my face as I folded the note that I must of read countless times since receiving it the day my husband died. He had been right, I had stopped visiting, apart of me never thought that it would mean anything to him. Our whole married life together I always felt that I was more of an inconvenience to him than anything else. He got more snappy towards the end, I didn’t blame him as such, I guessed the illness that was eating him slowly away would do that to a person. But in truth I had had enough. I had been afraid of him, more than people would ever know and with a diagnosis of him not coming out of hospital after fifty years of marriage I saw my opportunity to run, be free. So that leads me to where I am stood now, at the edge of the wheat field. Anyone passing by in cars down the track must think I have lost my mind l. A seventy four year old woman in a long summer dress and straw had stood stroking the long strands of wheat. Not one ounce of me cares what people think. I have spent too long on this planet being cautious of the things that I did to make someone else happy. But no more now, now I have had enough. I saw my marriage through to the end and now it is my chance to live. I step onto the brown lumpy earth at the edge of the field all the wile letting my fingers on both hands caress the crops. I inhale a deep breath feeling as though I can breath properly for the first time since I was in my twenties. A woman of my age now shouldn’t be able or want to run, but I will do this if it’s the last thing I do. I force my legs to move faster than they have in years, forcing them to move past the growth. It isn’t long before I am really moving, perhaps more than I even thought was possible. This is it, I know now, I can feel it coursing through me. This is the start of my new life, a second chance. I feel my fears start to ebb away the more I get deeper into the field. I always thought that I would be too old for a fresh start, but feeling this much life flow through me, I now know that you are never too old to start again.