A Red Flower

Layers of rich crimson red folding on one another into a soft puff.

Rays of sunbeams shining through delicate petal tips that glow with joy.

On the night of my first kiss, I took Madeline from Algebra class out to a little restaurant on the side of a lake. After finishing our dinner, we got up and strolled around the lake, hand in hand. We didn’t dare glance at each other, and we’d sooner jump in the water than open our mouths and say something. We just walked and felt each other’s presence. While the moon shone its gaze down on us, we paused and turned to face each other. It was just a feeling, and we were acting on it, glad to surrender ourselves to the powers of Love. We leaned towards each other in front of that lake, eyes closed, and let our mouths meet in an explosion of feeling. And beneath that first kiss was a beautiful, red flower. 

            Graduation was a year later, and I was no longer together with Madeline; our young love had faded out. It was a June evening that was a little too warm underneath our gowns as we waited not so patiently for the ceremony to begin. We were outside in the park next to the sports stadium the school was renting that night. I was playfully messing around with my friends, especially Ben, my best friend, who was a little more guileless than the rest of us boys. I was teasing him for not-so-subtly staring at a pretty girl across the park, and I playfully shoved him. His gown, a little too long for him, caught underfoot as he stepped back to regain his balance. His foot slid under him, and he collapsed backwards onto the ground. The rest of us found this hilarious, of course, and were bent over laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. And as Ben got back up, underneath him was a crushed, red flower. 

            We began college that Fall, and the friend circle was left to empty group chats and fond memories as we all left for different states to begin a new stage of our lives. I spent the evenings and weekends once school began with my nose buried in a book or my hand cramped from writing as lightning quick as I could without the handwriting of my homework resembling chicken scratch. On the once-in-a blue-moon days I wasn’t busy, I enjoyed laying in the park under an oak tree and relaxing with my eyes closed. And my head, filled to the brim with equations and literary authors and faces of pretty girls, was often lain beside a shining, red flower.

            And on the afternoon of my first car accident, I stood on the side of the road waiting for a truck to arrive and tow my car out of the ditch. On the top of that ditch, growing hesitantly in the soil were bent, red flowers. 

One damp October day, I received a call from my dad during a walk. I listened for a few seconds or a few minutes before I hung up. I wanted to speak to Dad but all I did was choke. I sat down heavily in the grass. Beside me, like a silent friend keeping me company, was a single red flower. 

Every moment that has made up my life was seldom spent alone. Ever since I was a little kid, I have noticed that everywhere I go I am followed by the same flower. At ten years old I sat in my room one sweaty summer night, the sharp glow of the computer screen almost as bright as the fluttering fireflies outside my window, and I searched on the internet. I didn’t scroll long before I found my mystery flower: the ranunculus. This bright summer flower is a perennial, which means each Fall it browns and dies. Like a Phoenix, the ranunculus is reborn the following spring when it blooms again from the same, original stock. Reading up on the ranunculus was enough of an answer to the mystery for me. Although finding fully bloomed ranunculus everywhere I go, including trips overseas, cannot be explained without paranormal means, I stopped noticing them. Like rocks and leaves, that ranunculus had become a common day object. 

By 30 years old, my life, too, had become common and routine, and I felt an urge in my bones to get up and leave to somewhere. Next thing I know there’s a ticket to the Himalayan mountains clutched in my hand and I’m standing outside the boarding ramp for a plane. I don’t know what I was expecting to find; maybe some sort of spiritual experience or mid-life realization. The Himalayas were somewhere I always wanted to visit, and I realized I wasn’t getting younger. That trip did change my life, though. It was where I met my wife.

            The cliffs and crevices of the Himalayas were howling that night, and I looked up nervously to try and find the outline of snow-capped peaks above. I had arrived the previous day at a large nearby city and drove to the base of the Himalayas earlier the following day. Daggers of snow shot through the sky, striking all the flesh I left exposed to the air, and the winds crept under my coats and chilled my bones. A few minutes earlier I was forced by the storm to abandon my car and continue on foot to the Inn. I was trudging through the snow, picturing in my mind images of warm pastries and a roaring fire to keep myself going. Up ahead I saw rays of light peeking through the swirling curtain of snow. I kept going, quicker now, towards that light, until I was nearly on top of it. The light died down to a sliver and I saw a gray figure-shape come out through the snow. Too late, I couldn’t stop my momentum, and slammed right into the figure. It fell back with a grunt barely audible over the howling wind. Deep in the snow, only the top of the figure was sticking out like some island in a white ocean. I stood there for a second, staring with my mouth agape down into the hole in the snow, before realizing I needed to help that poor soul I had knocked down. I reached down and pulled them up by the arms.

            “I’m so sorry!” I was pretty sure I said as the person got up onto their feet. They were facing away from me; all I could see was a pale blue coat more-than-a-little frosted with specks of snow. None of the words I thought I had spoken reached my ears, even though I had felt my mouth move. 

            “I’m sorry!” I yelled louder through the roaring of snow. 

“It’s okay,” she said, turning around. Iona was bundled up tightly and all I could see of her were crimson cheeks and amber eyes. A few strands of sun-touched-hair were loose and flying about in the wind. After that, we marched together through the snow until we found the Inn.

Iona and I bought a house together three years later. It’s a little thing with green shutters and a red door. It was a dream house. There our two children, Mark and Athena, grew up. In the backyard garden Iona planted daisies, pansies, and ranunculus:  her favorite flower. I learned this unbelievable fact on the fourth date, before I had confessed to her my strange relationship with the ranunculus. As cheesy at it seems, I think it was destiny we met. Else, what are the odds?

I know it sounds like a fairy-tale life, but that’s because it was. It felt like my time with Iona was time stolen from another person who was deserving of such a fulfilling life and love. However, that stolen time didn’t last forever. 

Two weeks ago, I sat in a chair beside the hospital bed Iona was laying in. A bundle of wires and tubes ran up along the side of the bed and into her. Her eyes were closed, and she looked tranquil. I’d like to think she passed away with no regrets. Her once vibrant red hair was now mostly gray. I wished I had the chance to watch it fully grey. Movement caught my eye: the heart monitor had suddenly changed. The red-line heartbeat had flat-lined at zero. I turned and looked back at her face. She seemed so peaceful as she passed.

Today, after the funeral, I went home with Mark and Athena. They had both left the nest many years ago, but we all wanted each other’s company after losing someone who shone as much light into our lives as Iona did. We sat on the sofa, drinking water, staying mostly quiet. The silence was driving me mad. All I could hear was the tick-tock of the clock and the clink of a glass set on the table. What I wanted to hear was Iona’s laugh like she always did when I acted like my dumb self. I couldn’t bear it any longer.

“I’m going out for a walk,” I said standing up slowly with stiff joints. Together, they looked up at me with odd expressions. I slipped out of the unbuttoned suit-jacket and draped it over a chairback.

“Want us to come with?” Athena asked gently. 

I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’ll be back soon,” I replied and went out the door. 

I picked a direction at the street and began walking. The trees were whispering with wind and gently shaking their branches in a dance. The summer sun was still well above the horizon, shining on as always. I couldn’t hear any footsteps or car tires; the street was completely silent in a peaceful way. Like Time had paused itself to simply let me exist. 

I stopped beside a bench and sat down. I took a breath and then let it out. I looked across the street from me and saw a tree with browned leaves. They rustled for a moment before coming still. I took another breath.

Sitting beside the bench was a single red flower. Layers of rich crimson red were folding on one another into a soft puff. Its petal tips were gently glowing from the peaceful sun. The neck of a proud green stem held its head up. It was a ranunculus, Iona’s favorite. I realized that I hadn’t seen one purely by chance since I met her in the Himalayas. I looked at it for a few minutes before turning back to face the street with it still beside me. I felt like Iona was still sitting beside me again like she used to do on our morning walks.

Now that she’s gone and I look back, it feels like every time I turned a corner and found the ranunculus in the ground or glanced up at an apartment balcony to see a potted ranunculus, it was her watching and living my life right alongside with me. I know it sounds cheesy and a naïve idea, but maybe that’s just how I am. But every time I see a single red flower, my day feels a little more bright.