Happy Birthday, My Love

The night was damp and cold and his bed was even colder.

The only source of warmth in the room was a bunch of magic candles, set atop a double-decker chocolate and vanilla cake , strewn with filings of the finest swiss chocolate.

Her favourite.

They sat quietly in the bed, waiting for the clock to strike twelve.

He took one more look at the clock.

“Go on , my love, its time”

He proceeded to sing “Happy birthday to you…” with all his heart.

She’d always insisted that whether it was her birthday or his, he would always have a bite of a piece of cake first and then go on and feed it to her.

“Here sweetheart, this is for you … “

She’d always nibble off a portion of his fingers along with the cake or if she was in a naughtier mood, bite at them really hard, making him wince momentarily.

It was her way of being playful. And he didn’t mind it one bit.

He felt the nibble today, and not the hard bite.

“Do you remember the first time we were together on your birthday , my love? It was at our wedding. The dates had somehow fallen in place and given the choice, we jumped at the chance of getting married on your birthday.”

As he looked at her, she acknowledged her own memory of that day with a smile.

“We’d dated only for seven months and couldn’t wait a day longer to get married. After the wedding, I’d organized a surprise birthday party for you in the garden adjoining the wedding hall. I was stupid enough to think that I’d be able to keep you off the plan by lying to you that it was a special wedding party for a group of my friends.”

His face was lighting up at the next sequence of events that he narrated.

“As we were taking our wedding vows, you held my hand tightly and whispered into my ear,

‘I want all my birthdays to be spent with you, and you alone’.

And since then, we ‘ve always spent your birthdays alone, just you, me and the double-decker cake!”

His eyes welled up as he rose from his bed.

“We’ll always spend it alone , my love…. We’ll always spend it alone”.

He turned back to lift the gold-framed portrait of his dead wife from the bed, blew the few flickering candles left on the cake, packed the cake neatly and tucked it away in the fridge and hung the picture of his wife on the wall before leaving the room.

As he shut the door, he blew a little kiss to the portrait on the wall , and whispered in an inaudible voice,

“Happy birthday, my love”.