by Erin Cole

Created on: March 01, 2010   Last Updated: March 30, 2010

Flowers For Him

A thick layer of sodden leaves and dirt pile beneath the bare, red trunks of dogwoods and moss covered maples in my backyard.  Damp air still embraces the chill of winter and the only life hearty enough to brave the cold are the crows, swathed in feathers as black as the dress I wore to his funeral.  I don’t count myself as one of the strong, daring the bitter winds to dig in the soil on this particular morning, for I feel as barren as the field across the drive.

“That’s not true,” he says.

“But isn’t it?”  I reply.  “Life as I knew it—as I loved it—has changed forever.”

“Changed, like hues on the leaves, but not dead,” Ben says.

“Like you.”  I can’t help but remind him of the cold reality where my dreams now sleep.

He is quiet, as if acknowledging what really happened on that snowy road.  He’s not really there, yet he is, like a shadow in my peripheral vision—fleeting, yet watchful.

I continue raking decomposing organics from the earth, trying to ignore the parallels in my head.  I search the ground for the tiniest sprout of life prodding from the soil with verdant promise, anything that will contrast with the bleakness I have cultivated since his accident.

“Every gardener knows that life is cyclic, Leah.”  He’s back, reminding me of my own beliefs.

“I know that,” I say, picking up a bundle of debris and throwing it into the compost bin.

“What dies in the fall is reborn in the spring.  It is the way of nature.”

“But we had dreams tog…,” I choke on the words before I can finish them.

“You can still have them.”

But I don’t want them—not without him and he must know or he wouldn’t be here.

In the distance, I hear the honking of mallard ducks heading east towards nearby marshes.  I gaze upon their perfect arrow in the sky, wishing I could follow, take to the amethyst blue, and escape the dingy confinements of my grief.

A rustle in the brushwood snaps my attention back to the yard and I catch Ben’s shadow ebbing the same direction as the mallards.  He disappears into the sticks of Viburnum Dawn, where the first signs of spring cluster along the woody nubs in soft shades of rose and magenta.  I follow.

“Remember what is not lost,” I hear him say, but he is already gone, drifting away with the morning clouds.

I reach for a stem and pull it to my nose.  The fragrance of beauty envelops me, like the song of a child.  My throat constricts what I’m not ready to release—maybe tomorrow.  I walk over to my bucket, grabbing a handful of bulbs, and place them in pockets I dug into the earth.  Blue irises were Ben’s favorite.

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