glass

Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash

Tragedy breaks the page
forever is riven
life, before
surviving, after

It is a perfect almost-summer day, the kind of day I tend to associate with funerals, although that isn’t really fair.

I don’t even remember the day we buried Rose.

There was a tent over the grave site and we family members stood inside it, barricaded from the rest of the mourners by the mountain of casket between us. I don’t remember what color it was, if there were flowers, what the weather was like. I don’t remember what I wore. I brought flowers from home, I think: a bouquet of roses and lavender in too-girly colors for my prickly, starburst sister, but it was all that was blooming at the time. My brother, ever the showman, sang MERCYME’s “Homesick,” accompanied by himself on guitar. He didn’t even break down. I, by contrast, read a poem I had written that was mostly about me, about trying to survive this. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t honoring of her memory. It was the same week she died and I couldn’t believe it yet. I was a skin bag full of broken glass; raw, jagged, fragile. I didn’t care what anyone else thought, I just wanted to write something for her, words I could tuck into the space in the ground that was about to hold my baby sister. A piece of tear-stained paper and a handful of home grown flowers aren’t much to give a dearly departed, but even that she couldn’t take with her. We were left with all her things, the shell of a life, like shed skin.

The grave site looks much different now, nearly three years later. Three years, God. It took us two years to get her grave stone designed, ordered, installed. The rose granite marbled with grey matches the grey marbled with pink of our baby brother’s grave stone, the one that’s right next to hers. Both stones are enclosed by a border of rust-red paving stones stuck in the ground on their ends, separating the coarsely shredded mulch within from the tired lawn of the cemetery grounds without. Pots of flowers, flattened by the heat, are sunk in the mulch between the stones. My mother brought these last week, although she wasn’t able to come today. I add my own little peat pot containing a single, blooming pansy next to the others, while my husband returns to the car for a jug of water in an attempt to resuscitate my mother’s flowers. The peat pot matches the mulch, a natural shade of tan that I quite like although, apparently, my mother wanted black. It almost looks like the pansy is growing there on its own.

It’s called a “Bunny Ears viola,” Rose. I ordered the seeds for the girls, because of all the bunnies we have now. I thought you would appreciate one.

The pansy is unusually colored, white except for the two uppermost petals, which are longer than the rest and a perky fuchsia. Rose would have liked them. I only got four of these to grow, despite multiple plantings. This year was funny that way. Either everything grew with hardly any help, or it didn’t want to grow at all. Perseverance paid off in some cases, like with the pansies. In other cases, I just ended up with way more chamomile than I could possibly use. I’m rambling, drifting, and I don’t care.

I have a Wise Woman’s herbal garden now, Rose. I realize that I am opening the door to a hell of a lot of teasing for calling it that, but I decided it’s time to own my heritage. Mom was always the herbalist, but I want to learn more. I want to dry my own herbs and make teas and tinctures in my own kitchen. I want to CRAFT.

Maybe…I want to know if I could have saved you.

We’re quiet except for my dad. He’s the only one here today besides my man and girls. Normally not chatty, he gets that way here, filling the silence with a string of talk. I usually find it annoying, but I don’t really mind today. No; my mother finds it annoying, but she isn’t here, so it’s fine. I lie down in the grass above the head stones, as close to my sister as I can get.