Sometimes when I look at Matthew's eyes in the right light, they are almost blue.
Just when the light from the window comes right on his face, late in morning, during Greek literature classes. His eyes would wander and I'll catch a glimpse of yours. All the things that your eyes once promised, I see in his too.

[hr]

Your eyes were always that shade, until the last moment on your deathbed. You opened them one last time, asked me to call for your daughter, but you couldn't finish your words: you just stared at me, for a while. Did you recognize me? In those last moments, before I closed your eyes and called your family, were you aware that it was me, back to see you one last time?
Wendy suspected nothing: she was barely two years old when I bode you farewell, from a train window to another. She couldn't possibly recognize me when she hired me as your nurse.
I remember your hand stopping just shy of the emergency brake. You had always been the wise one: I'm sure you regretted nothing.

[hr]

Matthew has graduated, he's taking a sabbatical before going to University. He would like to see Italy, like you did, and then Eastern Europe which he has read so much about. Long lost Kingdoms that just returned to Europe after centuries under the Ottomans. He was so kind as to bring a corsage to all his lady teachers, and mine had a pink rosebud. I feared that he might turn more like his father, but somehow you left an imprint on him. All those afternoons spent in his grandfather's library allowed your lingering presence to mold him.
He says that he will come tell me everything when he'll be back. I smile, and tell him that they always tell that, and they never do, but I don't mind: he's a man now. He's not offended, his smile just turns broader as he waves goodbye.

I was not calling him a liar, it's just that in a year's time, Professor Gwendolyne will have died in an accident, and another woman, vaguely similar, will appear in his life. I have been building her identity for the past ten years, so I could spend some time by his side. Maybe this time things will turn out better.

[hr]

Matthew has died in Flanders fields He dreamed of going to help overrun Serbia, but he died just by the other side of the Channel.
They brought his body back, and now he lies by your side, in what should have been Wendy's place.
Somebody might ask why Professor Gwendolyne shadow is by your grave, why is she crying over your headstone while poppies blow. They might carry for years the memory of that ghost, but sooner or later they will forget, like they always do.

Matthew's student friend was never born, and she's already dead. I will go see the rising of a new China, trying to forget you, like I never do.