On 15th March 2047, Jack and Jill sat on the two ends of a big table. It was awkward. They tried hard, but they were not able to talk to each other.
No words spilled out of either of their mouths. They had met at a dating site a month back and they had never been happier. Theirs was a perfect match as per that site. They met in person on the two ends of that big table for the first time. Before that, they had been chatting away online as if they had been soulmates from a past life.
But when they met at that big table in front of each other, they couldn’t look into each other’s eyes. They couldn’t smile at each other. It was weird. They had so much to say but did not speak a word. Jack had never been to a date like that in his short twenty-six-year life till then.
They came upon an idea after that. They decided to get back home without saying anything and reconnect a few days later. And lo, behold! What a good two weeks they had away from each other, with no word spoken! They hit it off together, away from each other, despite the fact that they never spoke a word.
That is when they tried to meet in person again. That was on 31st March 2047, and the result had been the same. Pin drop silence. That is when Jill decided. “We will lose a lot if we talk. The spoken word is not our cup of tea,” she said after thirty minutes of silence. Jack had followed it since then.
Three months later, they got engaged, and in less than a year, they got married. Though there was no word ever spoken between them, they knew everything about each other. They had a long, happy married life of over four decades together.
On 31st March 2093, Jack buried his seventy-year-old wife. They had spent forty-five years in marital bliss. But he didn’t say a word at the funeral. Or on his way back.
Only when he parked his car and entered their, now his, empty home and picked up his phone, the emotions welled up. Jack felt the emptiness in his life as he stared at the phone.
It had been the connection between his and his wife all their life. Right from that fortunate day in the March of 2047.
It was when he started typing on it with his old fingers, that all his life flashed in front of him. The images of all the chats he had with Jill returned. He could picture her smiling at the other end, typing away.
He had buried her phone with her. With tears flowing down his cheeks, he imagined her watching his messages and smiling. That is how they had communicated all their life. With no spoken word between them, it was the typed word that had filled their life with all the joy and happiness.
Jack smiled as he typed and pictured Jill typing in heaven.
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