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My Grandmother and I had a pact, an unwavering commitment to slip through the veil separating the dead from the undead, to reconnect with a cold reminder, some subtle touch to tell the other of our presence. Whoever passed first would contact the other. We rarely spoke of it, such are the conventions of the southern soul, but I would occasionally catch a glint of remembrance in her rheumy eyes, a promise to be kept, a gift in the making.

As I grew up, Grandma grew older, grew closer to the end than the beginning. Days shortened like shadows at noon. The face in my mirror looked familiar, like an old uncle sitting at a Thanksgiving table passing cranberries and begging one of the kids to pull his finger. Grandma traded her cane for a walker. One day she was short of breathe and the next she just quit breathing.

The air was as cold as her granite tombstone the day we buried Grandma. I stood among a great sea of dark shapes thrown together by grief and blood. The preacher spoke slowly, teasing tears from the women and young ones, drawing nods from bald, wrinkles heads as the wind stirred whirls of sand from the pile of earth beside the coffin. I searched the sky for a sign, some telltale omen, but all I saw was a crow fighting the wind. The clouds held no meaning, no message, no shifting shapes stirred by her spirit. Three days without a word. With a hymn, we left her body in the ground.

A few days later, my dad brought me a Hibiscus. It had been my grandmothers and I wondered if this grand bit of greenery was my sign, a reminder that her spirit was alive despite winter's withering touch or was it just a plant, a bit of detritus washed up from the river of her life.

A year passed, and as the days faded so did the image of Grandma, the face in my mind's eye soft-focused, like a photograph taken with Vaseline smeared on the lens. The hibiscus was still alive, but a mere silhouette of what it had been under my grandma's loving care, it's leaves more yellow than green, it's branches thin as she'd been at the end. The sight of it unsettled me and I vowed to throw it out tomorrow, on the anniversary of Grandma's burial.

I woke searching for a memory of a dream, some silver thread I could pull to unravel a mystery revealed in slumber, but the fabric of my mind was whole. Surely she would choose this time, this anniversary to fulfill a life long promise. In silence, I stumbled into the living room and found a bloom, a great cup of deep blue, a blue the color of promises given and promises kept, atop the dying hibiscus.

Learn more about this author, Jim Thomason.
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