He stood back up and looked down somberly at the small piece of neatly groomed ground where Annie and Josh were at rest. “Hi guys,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come and see you.” He paused, rolling the brim of his hat between his fingers. “I had a few things I needed to work out before I could…” He looked up at the blue sky dotted with high, thin white clouds, then back to the graves. “I guess I didn’t do very well after you…after you both left.” Henry slowly, almost imperceptibly shook his head at the waste of life that on many levels, he still blamed himself for. “I can’t tell you both how sorry I am…for what I…did…” was all he could get out before he began sobbing uncontrollably. He cried non-stop for several minutes, at times struggling to catch his breath. Years of sorrow and anguish and guilt poured out of him, washing down his cheeks and falling onto the grass at the foot of the graves. He was finally finding a way to forgive himself.

Henry didn’t try to stop the onslaught of tears. He wouldn’t have been able to anyway. He let it all empty out of him like water from a porcelain pitcher. Several minutes had passed before the wave of emotion that crashed through him began to subside, and when it did, he slowly caught his breath and wiped his face with the handkerchief he pulled from his back pocket. He forced a smile. “I’m sorry,” he said breathlessly.

“I’m doing better with my life now,” Henry said after another long pause. “I found someone who helped me get back on my feet and is helping me see the things in this world that I missed before.” He glanced back to the road, where Jessie stood patiently by the door of the truck, her blue cotton dress blowing gently in the breeze. “You’d both like her.” He turned back to the graves and forced another smile. “We even got married a couple months back.” Henry held up his left hand, showing a silver wedding band he proudly wore on his finger.

He had never been comfortable wearing rings, or jewelry of any kind in the past—not that he ever had any to wear in the first place. He didn’t even have a ring from when he and Annie got married. If he had, however, he doubted he would have worn it. He knew many a rancher who not only lost his wedding ring, but also the finger it was attached to when the ring got hung up in a piece of machinery or piece of tack on an unruly horse. But like so many other things in his life, that was somehow different for him now, too.

For Henry, the ring he wore was not only a symbol of his commitment to Jessie, but more importantly, it was also a symbol of a commitment to his new life. It was a life where he would try to spend more of his time looking forward and less of his time looking back. Henry was beginning to finally understand, perhaps in his own way, that life without Annie and Josh wasn’t just about surviving, which is how he had been looking at it. It was about thriving. Being with Jessie helped him to see he had been given a gift not many people ever get: a second chance at life. With this second chance, he made a silent commitment to himself that he would do better. Not that he would be a saint, or otherwise be something or someone he would never be able to aspire to. But simply that he would do better. And so far, he had.