Scratch

How sad is this story? I aimed to make it sad, but I'm not sure if I achieved that goal. What do you think?

              “Where are you going?” I asked her, the fading sunlight illuminating her soft features.
              “We’re done,” she said, her face now turned away from me. “I can’t stay here. You know that.”
              “Can’t we give it one more shot?”
              “Look Joseph, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing either of us can do. I have to leave.”
              “Please,” I begged.
              “No. Goodbye.” I pushed the black, felt box down into my pocket.
            I watched as she descended down the gentle hill in front of me. With each passing second, her silhouette shrunk. Soon, she faded away, leaving me on the wooden bench where I had planned to pull out the black box. Where I planned to get down on one knee. Where I planned to change both my life and hers. I closed my eyes, exhausted. The wooden bench beneath me had been smoothed by countless others before me; a man sitting cross-legged, cogitating and reading his most recent Conrad novel, a child, talking to his father, stationed in Iraq, or perhaps an old lady, with no other desire than to see the sun set one last time.
            As my arms rested where theirs had, and my eyes contemplated the same skies theirs had, I felt as if we were intertwined. Like a child, father off to war, gazing up at the stars and believing that maybe, somewhere, his father was gazing at those same stars, I felt connected. People I didn’t know, and probably never would, were all part of me on this bench. I felt the man’s bewilderment, although not for a book, but for her. I felt the child’s exhaustion. And, most of all, I felt the elderly lady’s acceptance. There was nothing to be done, except gaze out at the setting sun.
            At that moment, although it may have been only an illusion, a mirage in the middle of an endless desert, I felt that they were experiencing what I had. The man, when Kurtz died. The child, when his mom told him that Daddy wouldn’t be coming home. And the old lady, when she received the call that she would have to return to the hospice.
            I got up, and walked over to a nearby tree. I sat down, watching the egg in the sky slowly descended into the hills, weathered by years of nature. Every day, the hills were gentler than the last. I watched as the sun and hills intercepted. A breathtaking display of crimsons, Titians, and fulvouses surrounded the blackened hills. I stood up, and took the black box out of my pocket. I opened it, and removed a diamond ring from the indentations in the box. I hung it on one of the tree’s branches, and walked away, watching the last rays of sun glint off of the lovingly polished diamond.

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