Cheap Flowers for the Dead

It is early morning before the sun can reign overhead. The soft light is a distant lamp that allows me to watch the world in a more human way. Though I expose myself in the indirect day time, I am not a daring creature. Others of my kind would have already tucked themselves into their tight coffins and closed their emotionless eyes. They would be saving their energy, building their preternatural powers to the breaking point, and dreaming of the life-giving blood that will release these forces. I, instead, embrace the cool human morning alone, without indulging in the company of my fellow immortals.

I have been staying awake to see dawn's birth for years. This odd habit began when a small child visited my cemetery with one hand around her grandmother's wrist, the other gripping a half dozen paper flowers. She had set her cheap, homemade beauties down on a grave that had not been properly cleaned since it was dug, twenty years earlier. The stone slab read Luke Douglass. The child spoke the word Grandpa before she left.

The older woman never returned to the cemetery, but the granddaughter visited Luke quite often. Every other day, before she made her way to school, she brought a paper flower to the grave. After she had left her little gift, I would go out to the grave and steal the cheap flower, replacing it with a rose. It is still an obsession of mine. Her flowers litter my own hidden crypt, and my flowers die over her grandfather's grave.

She noticed her missing creations immediately but never tried to find them. The child liked the mystery the same way I enjoy the ordinary.

Things tend to change, though. Humans seem to change from day to day, especially the ones with the will to live life wholly. I wonder if I was like her when I was living. Was I so reluctant to watch myself grow, yet so set on seeing myself grown. I like to think I relished in life like the girl. The way this girl dances when she believes no one is watching and talks of the opposite sex when she believes she is alone, shows me how much we are the same. The granddaughter thinks she has no loved ones. She thinks for a short while that she is without love, thus unable to give love.

She is a rebel now with a ring in her naval and an attitude that presents itself in front of others. Thankfully, she does not show my graveyard such lip. She does not understand what she has. I have many that once loved me, but I cannot be with them now. She misuses her time. I begin to despise this wasteful child, but then she changes again. She is a teary eyed girl that has lost a grandmother and has two paper flowers to plant.

Though she seems so very alone, a sweetheart miraculously appears. She brings him to the graveyard a few nights and stays with him until early morning. He is always silent, solemn. He shows respect for those beneath him. He does not laugh at her paper flowers. I like him.

My two young visitors go through many trials. My girl misbehaves. She curses him over her grandparents' graves. She tears one of her fragile flowers and steps on one of my living ones. The fights do not last. One evening she comes on her man's arm. She wears a special ring.

I thought that this would change her visits. I thought that she would forget the graves, her flowers, but she holds to the past. College and family do not hold her back. Her visits continue.

Her stomach rounds with every new visit. She seems ill, but I see the radiance in her eyes. One morning, she carries a bundle in her arms. It is a boy. He laughs. He does not know that he is in a place of death, for what is death to a newborn? I have never seen my girl so happy.

The boy grows and the girl tells him of his lineage. The child is intrigued at first, his small arms around his mother's swollen middle. He does not listen to her anymore. He listens for his baby sister in her belly. Soon two children and my girl visit the graves. They help her make the flowers. Then the children are gone. It is only her. Her children have other things to do, more important lives to live.

The girl's hair is turning a shade of gray, but she has ripened well. I cherish her mornings and evenings, though even the night shows deepening wrinkles on her brow. Her life is coming to a close soon. She seems ready. Her smile is as solemn as her late husband's as she envisions her grandchildren standing over her grave.

I know her day has come.

I am ready.

It is early morning before the sun can reign overhead. The child I've been watching for so many years has returned to my view to finish this ordinary, simple life of hers. She stands before the graves, a shrinking, elderly woman holding herself up with a metal walker. She uses all of her strength to bend down and pick up the dying rose that replaced her last cheap flower. She holds it to her chest.

Her knees wobble; she is going to fall. Like wind, I move soundless to her where she stands. I catch her. Her wide, bewildered eyes look up at my eternally youthful face. I feel her heart fading beneath my grasp. She ignores this coming death.

"My flowers," she whispers. I nod with a small smile on my porcelain face. I lay her between the graves. She is gone before she touches the ground. Her eyes are still half open. But they are empty now. Her spirit has given up. Her soul has surrendered.

I go back to my crypt for the flowers. When I return, I see the risen sun. I remember her last true smile and walk out into daylight.

Her children knew where to look for her; my granddaughter's body was found later that day. Delicate paper flowers, some yellowed and musty with years, were found over her body. There were hundreds of them, cheap flowers, and one red rose that lay on a pile of ashes over Luke Douglass' final resting place.