Beautiful Human

The alarm was set for 7 a.m. today like it was every day, but Jane couldn't sleep any longer. She knew today was special. The 4th of June had become a yearly tradition for her.

'How old will he be this year?' she wondered, staring at the light emanating from her cell phone screen in her dimly lit room.
‘Forty-Two’, she remembered, smiling to her herself.
‘Damn Leo, you’re getting old!’
She stood up and placed a gift wrapped in gleaming red paper at the foot of the bed towards the left. Yes, Leonard has a favourite side and she had never questioned it. She knew exactly what her next steps were. Make a cup of coffee with caramel in it, take a shower and cut slices of the cake she bought yesterday. One for herself and one for Leonard. She could swear chocolate cake was his favourite thing to eat.
She sat by the window with her cake in hand. Leonard's excitement about cake could easily put a child in a toy store to shame. This is one of Jane’s favourite aspects of him. He keeps the child within her alive too. She licks the last bits of frosting off her plate (a habit she’s ashamed to admit she’s picked up from Leonard) and gets ready for the next part of her annual ritual. This is the part she looks forward to the most.
She opens her laptop and almost instinctively goes to her emails. She didn’t want to be here.
‘Jane stop being so lost all the time!’
While she was already there, she checked whether her absence from work mail had been delivered. She had sent it yesterday at 6 pm, but she double-checked to make sure she hadn’t made any clumsy mistakes.'Sorry, can't make it to work today. It is Leonard's birthday. Please oblige and add it to my vacation days.'

Jane finally got to what mattered the most to her, about today. It was a folder called 'MY JANE' on her desktop. She sighed as she pressed the icon. This part hurts the most. She is always prepared for it, but she never resists it. She lets the pain come and overwhelm her another time, while the pictures load on her computer screen. She looks at the photos of her with Leonard. All of their photos together, from the time they moved in together to them seven years ago doing weird stuff together. She now knows every detail of these photos by heart.
But today as Jane clicked on the right arrow key on her keyboard she wondered about the time they spent together that they had failed to capture.
She recalled the first time she saw Leonard, 18 years ago, in the cafe where they used to meet, with the kind waiter. She remembered Leonard telling her for the first time that he loved her.
But over the years, with several trips down these memories, the details seemed to have become blurred to her.
‘What was the colour of the shirt Leonard wore when I saw him for the very first time?’
‘What was the name of the waiter whom we both loved a lot at that cafe?’
‘What was the weather like outside when he told me he loved me more than Icarus loved the sun?’
Jane became enraged at herself for allowing these memories to fade from her mind. She had never liked taking pictures, and if it hadn't been for Leonard's constant pestering, she wouldn't have been able to keep him this close to her at all times, even after all these years.
She cursed herself for being so stupid and realised that her eyes were so full of tears, she could only faintly see the picture on her computer screen. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and continued to scroll through the photos. She knows Leo adored these photographs as much as she did.
There were so many moments she wished she could relive with him again and again. Leonard, she felt, lived in her mind's library. Right next to the feeling of the sun on her skin, lay the memory of how his touch made her feel—all warm and fulfilled. He'd removed her pointless insecurities and hidden them from her so that she'd not remember of the times she felt weak. He might have muddled a few of their memories together just to annoy her. He hid a small part of his love for her in their photos and the sound of his laugh into her favourite song so that every time she hears it, she remembers how he laughed at her silly jokes and would find herself smiling unknowingly, all alone.
Jane kept saying, 'Over the years I realised that our existence can only be mirrored in the minds of the people who love us', and her favourite reflection was in his. She does everything in her power to collect the fragments Leo left behind in her mind. She suddenly even comes across some new memories now and again, even after all this time.
‘Goodbye you, my beautiful human.’
These were the words he said to her as he heaved for his final breaths. He was all alone in the hospital as Jane looked at the love of her life, one last time, every cell on her body yearning to hold him again, dying to feel his embrace around her, this time to remember it forever. 
‘Goodbye you, my beautiful human.’
He hid these words within Jane's nightmares so that whenever she confronted her demons, she would remember that she was loved. And until she allows Leonard to disappear from her head, she lets him sink into the deepest shadows of her mind, where she keeps him safely guarded.
Jane looks at the clock and notices that two hours have passed. Her neck feels sore now, her eyes are swollen, but her ritual isn’t over yet. She turns off her computer and thinks about all the cleaning she needs to do. Leonard was always particular about keeping their home clean.  She walks to her bedroom after putting her plate in the kitchen sink. She draws the curtains, allowing sunlight to pour into the room and disperse all over her skin. Jane feels alive once again. She takes the wrapped gift from the foot of the bed and places it in a dresser full of Leonard's clothes, where six other boxes lay perfectly still, wrapped in coloured paper. Her ritual was now complete.