When I was 24 years old, my first husband died. I was living in the Bay Area, 2400 miles from where I grew up. My husband had a great many friends there, and they had quickly become my friends, too. So I wasn’t all alone, I had their support and love to help me.

He had passed away the night before Halloween, and I didn’t go out except to my friend’s homes. It was late November, and the weather was still mild, so one of my close girlfriends suggested that we go to San Francisco for the day. There were a few of us, and we drove across the Oakland Bay Bridge into the city. I never got tired of looking at the quaint, tall houses lined up side by side, all in different bright colors. We drove down Lombard Street and then to Fisherman’s Wharf to walk around and see the ocean.

My friends were trying to cheer me up, but I was feeling very low. I felt out of place suddenly, and a little lonely. We had a lovely dinner at a restaurant that overlooked the water and by then it was getting dark.

We went outside to talk and walked onto a deck that faced the setting sun. The sunset was pretty, and it lit the waters with shades of orange and purple. As the sun slipped away behind the ocean, I watched as the sea became something completely different. The waters were as black as ink, and the dark waves were pounding relentlessly against the seawall under us. The waves were like coiling, writhing, living things. I couldn’t look away from that darkness, it was pulling me in, and I felt like the dark waters were calling me with no voice, just their hopeless pounding and pounding. Come to me, where there is no pain, only black and cold, they seemed to say. I was transfixed, terrified, even though I knew this couldn’t be real. Or was it? I don’t know how long I stood and watched the dark waves, but it seemed like an eternity. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my arm. “Hey,” my friend was saying, “Hey, don’t stare at that. Look at this.”

She pulled me around and I was blind at first, my eyes had been filled with the dark. Slowly, I saw a whole world of light and color open up to me. The Wharf was decorated for Christmas, and every building, everything was strung with colorful lights. The colors were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, so bright and full of life, hope and cheer. My soul was flooded with joy at such beauty after the darkness that had pressed on me, and I started crying. My friends all gathered around me and we had a group hug while they told me they loved me, that everything was going to be okay. I realized that darkness was real and had power, and that I could never let it get that close to having power over me again.

I will never forget that night, the ocean, my friends and the beautiful, hopeful lights.

This was written in response to Esther Chilton’s writing prompt.

The prompt was DARK

Writing Prompts