A promise taken

I feels like so recently I gently dragged Liane off the regular Killiney Hill walking track to the rocks that look over Killiney Bay and down to Bray Head.  She was a little irritated at the walk we’d only just began, being interrupted by me messing. I started on with a spiel about how well we’d been getting on of late and how close I felt to her -  her face a picture of confusion. I knelt down and asked Liane to marry me and the shock, the euphoria, the classic loss for words - it all happened so quickly and so beautifully. We burst into tears and we kissed and the world was ours and ours alone. 

Today that seems, like so many other special moments, equally close and equally far away. The blue promise ring I gave her sits in my house with no hand to go on. Our dreams of life, family and adventures sit gathering dust too, taken from us before they’d their fair chance to bloom. That day 4 years ago was so very perfect and here I am today looking at a very different life with tough roads and winding paths. 

The ever-sharp memory of her smile will be carried around and clung on to desperately by me today...