Yellow Roses on Your Grave

I promised you, when your breath began to rattle in your chest and your hand laid weak in mine, that I would grow roses on your grave. Yellow, you insisted. Yellow to make me happy when you no longer could. 

A full year and then some passed by in guilt as my vow remained unfulfilled, not due to ignorance or neglect, but simply because the pain was too much to bear. 

Each morning I would wake in the dim pale light filtering through the curtains and fix my eyes on the empty space you used to occupy, swearing that it would be the day that I fulfilled my promise. I would dress and ready myself, muttering in the stillness as I tried to steel myself to see you. Passing through the halls, I would spy your ghost in the portraits and mirrors, or catch a glimpse of your shadow from the corner of my eye. Every time I turned my head, I’d find myself alone. 

Downstairs, I would wipe the dust from your favorite cup while my tea steeped. I would feed your rabbits and water our garden, spotting the colorful tulips nearly done sprouting but not yet bloomed. In the living room, our cat dozing comfortably in your chair, I’d shift your coat aside to take mine and reach for the door, determined to fulfill my promise.

I pull up short as I imagine your cold face, painted like a doll with artificial life, your eyes sealed shut by minuscule spikes and your veins filled with chemicals. In my mind I see the simple wooden coffin, surrounded with offered flowers in funerary white that don't at all suit the vibrance of your life. I see the hole they lowered you into, the soil and the insects thrown on top of you while the clouds hung above us, dark and foreboding.  

My heart would break anew and leave me gasping for air, unable to open that door and accept that you would never cross its threshold again. Your flowers would wait yet another day. 

Your death wasn’t sudden. There was no burst of lightning, no pleasant ignorance of the end drawing near. Instead, you left me like the seasons, both of us well aware of what was to come and helpless to stop it. As certain as the warmth of summer will give way to fall, leaving the leaves to wither and fade until the onslaught of the cold, you were sure to follow suit. 

There was no deal I could make, be it with God or the Devil, that would bring you back to me. I tried pleading countless times to whatever might await you during your initial decay as you grew weaker and weaker, until each breath of mine became a prayer for yours. 

No prayer can stop the coming of winter. 

All I have left are twenty years of memories and the echo of what was. Your favorite shawl still hangs over the chair beside the window where you would watch the rabbits nibble on dandelions in the yard. Absently, I open drawers lined with bottles of medicine long expired and can’t bring myself to throw them away. Your ring sits on the nightstand beside our bed where you would place it each night, untouched. I walk in the door and call your name, forgetting you cannot answer.  

Our home is now a reliquary, devoted to you. 

Never again will I wake with you curled into my chest, peaceful in your sleep and unaware that your hair tickles my nose and my arm is filled with pins and needles from being trapped beneath you. You will never again tilt your head back to smile up at me as I hug you from behind, or step on my feet as we dance to the music floating gently throughout our home.  

A year and then some passes before I can face you. 

The air is brisk as I cross the graveyard, upsetting the morning dew and ignoring both the rapid beating of my heart and the unnerving irregularity of the ground below. In my hands I clutch a pot, the beginnings of a rose bush just for you. The world is quiet, save for the singing of a lone robin hiding in the budding branches of a nearby tree, the sole witness to my solitary procession.  

It isn’t hard to find you among the rows of white and grey. Your headstone comes into view and a lump forms in my throat at the sight. The stone is cold and impassive, entirely at war with the memory of your warmth and gentle nature, and it feels wrong. Dread fills me as it looms ever closer, but soon the space between us closes and I stand before it, greeted only by your epitaph. 

Beside your grave is an empty space reserved for me. I wonder if I’ve already passed on, distant as I feel from the rest of the world, and simply haven’t realized it yet. The world keeps turning, but I’m still left beside you. 

Spirit or living, there is work to do. Reverently I kneel with a quiet greeting, setting aside the rose bush in its pot as I remove a trowel from the pocket of my coat. The images in my nightmares flash before me -- painted face, white flowers, dirt and worms -- and I have to pause to remind myself to breathe. Pushing away these thoughts, I steady myself and plunge the tool into the dampened dirt, somewhere above where I imagine your heart to be. 

In silence I dig, upturning the earth I watched them blanket you with the last time I stood here. No foreign roots or hidden stones appear to block my path, and the progress of my shovel remains unimpeded as the hole grows larger. I set the tool aside to complete the last few inches with my hands, tossing earth and startled insects aside. You sleep far below me, encased in your coffin beyond my reach. 

Satisfied with my progress, I gently pull the infant rose bush from its container and loosen the roots, transplanting it with care to its new home. My hands push the soil back around it and pat it into place.

My promise has been kept. 

I sit back on my heels and press my trembling hands against my forehead, clasped in prayer with your loamy soil embedded beneath my nails. My shaky breath exhales in a stream of fog, hanging heavy in the air, and my heart stings in my chest as though it were encased in thorns. 

The sky above is grey as it was before, but it feels less foreboding now as I stare at the little rose bush. Slowly, the ache behind my sternum subsides, still present but bearable. Petrichor fills the air and signals the coming of the rain that will feed the plant and urge it to stake its claim here beside your headstone.  

I know your roses will never reach you with their shallow-growing roots, but still I picture them climbing down, stalwart and determined, pushing deeper in their steady path until they find you in your fragile wooden coffin. One day the wood will rot away, and they will grasp at your ribs, encircling your chest and claiming you for themselves, beautiful and proud above you. 

Your bones will be their trellis. From you they will bloom. 

Time passes and thunder begins to rumble overhead. Reluctantly, I rise and say my goodbyes, promising to see you again soon. The now empty pot dangles in my fingers as I pick my way back through the rows of loved ones remembered and forgotten, and I realize that the air in my lungs suddenly feels less of a burden. 

You would never have asked me to live my life grieving you. In your memory I bloom and continue on, savoring the beauty of each day as it passes. The years pass by in their steady pace and the pain begins to ebb, soothed to a familiar and comforting ache within my chest.  The lines deepen at the corners of my eyes and mouth, and slowly our home begins to feel less like a tomb and more like a scrapbook, the embodiment of the times we shared together.  

Your roses grow and flourish, standing tall and sunshine yellow amidst the rows of weathered grey and brown stones.  I never stop missing you, but I brush my fingers along their petals and feel you beside me, waiting patiently until the day I join you beneath the yellow roses.