Flowers for the Dead

There’s something odd which happens when, as a man, you walk down the street with a bunch of flowers in your hand. You get very different reactions from different women as they pass.
Younger women; mostly in their twenties: smile quickly, sweetly even, as if to say: “Aww…you must really love her.”

And, of course, they’re right. I do love her.

Women in their thirties and forties; those who have had longer and more varied experiences of the world: look at you, see the flowers, and a flash of contempt momentarily darkens their features. They seem to be saying: “What did you do?! Betray her? Let her down?! Forget her birthday?!?”

And, of course, they’re right. I did betray her. I did let her down. And, yes, once I did forget her birthday.

But for every birthday, there is another date etched in the stone. For every candle blown out, another light must be extinguished…eventually. Inevitably.

As a child, I’d walked through that graveyard, to and from school, every day. It wasn’t grim, morbid or macabre. It was just the quickest way. I like the graveyard. Always have.
Every Saturday afternoon, I would visit my grandmother’s grave with my aunts. I’d stare at them in childlike puzzlement as they stood before the headstone in their Sunday Best, hands clasped at their midriffs in a gesture of reverence, silently mouthing the prayers of their girlhoods in Gaelic and Latin. It was as though they were obsessed with the dead. It wasn’t this weekly ritual which makes me think so; some variation of it was ubiquitous in every family as I was growing up. Growing up in the constant sight of this graveyard. My aunts’ house was filled with pictures of those who had gone before. Their parents. Their siblings. Uncles and aunts I was too young to remember. Their house was a veritable sepulchre of photographic remembrance.
They had a particular sideboard in the (good) front room which was reserved for the dearly departed. On the day of every family funeral, a new portrait was given pride of place on that sideboard. It was in a prominent part of the room in which my aunts would receive guests to the house.
If you were important enough to warrant admission to that room; you had to suffer the scrutiny of those monochrome spectres.

My mother’s picture was placed there ten years ago today.

A few years ago, on the afternoon of Christmas Day, I had little else to do; so I went to visit my mother’s grave. As I stood there; staring at the pale, granite headstone and the fading relief lettering, the propensity for people to put seasonal wreaths and even Christmas decorations on the final resting places of their loved ones baffled me. Not only were almost half of the graves on that hill festooned with traditional Victorian wreaths; mostly plastic holly, waxy and glossy in the light of the pale winter sun: but there were also other, less tasteful, decorations. Out of place looking snowmen (it had been a mild winter) and even the occasional garish effigy of Coca~Cola~Claus; that ancient caribou-mounted gift-god now dragooned by every company looking to sell something at the end of the calendar year.
The most unique decoration, however, was on the nearby grave of a dead child. Before a heartbreakingly small headstone of white marble, flanked by two smiling cherubim (why were they smiling?), was a strew of wreaths, flowers, cards and Christmas decorations. Somewhere in that morass was something (I didn’t want to look close enough to see what, exactly) playing music. It sounded like a Christmas card, playing a tinny, electronic and far too up tempo rendition of Silent Night. It felt so out of place…so mocking of the setting…as to be crass.
But that was nothing compared to what it was like the day after. Again, I had little else to do and found myself, once more, drawn to the cold quietude of the graveyard. The same thing was playing the same tune. But this time, a little over twenty-four hours later, the battery had run down significantly. The irritating jauntiness of the famous Christmas song of the day before, was now replaced by a sound more strained, more tired and mournful. Frankly, more disturbing. Chilling, even.
It was the very sound of despair; the despair the parents must still feel at the loss of the child. That same despair which moved them to decorate their child’s grave as though it were a crib…for a living child.

On this, the tenth anniversary of her death, I place the flowers at the foot of that headstone.
Unlike my aunts so many years ago, I do not mutter prayers under my breath in dead and dying languages. There is no set form of words for me. I merely let my mind wander. I thought-rhapsodize, if you will.
Most of my thoughts are not particularly profound or interesting. Some are self-pitying; many are mundane: one or two are merely functional.

I do love her.

I did betray her.

I did let her down.

I did forget her birthday…once.

I miss her.

The only flowers I ever buy are flowers for the dead.