Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
She fixed the vase and flowers and even picked out the worst of the wilted ones so the rot didn’t travel to the white petals of the rest of the roses that were still fresh. Once finished, she could barely tell that she’d picked out flowers from the bushel at all.
“There you go,” she said, reading the name and date of a woman who had lived nearly eighty-nine years, before she stood once more.
Back on the path, Gracen picked up a cluster of pin cherries that had fallen from one of the trees. The fruit from the trees—not great for people as they were quite sour—fed birds and other animals in the late spring and looked like pins in a sewing cushion with their bright red, but small, globes. Her favorite time to visit the graveyard was spring, though. When the pin cherry trees bloomed with white blossoms, and the pathways weaving throughout the gravestones were decorated with fallen petals.
It had been in the spring of the year when she buried her parents. Their accident had happened at the end of winter when the ground was too frozen to bury them, so to rub salt deeper into the wound, she’d waited months to actually see their matching black caskets go beneath the dirt.
The fact she could look back on that day and remember the blossoms coloring up the path that carried her to her parents’ graves before she thought about how broken she’d been leading up to that moment—and beyond—spoke volumes to Gracen.
The pain never went away.
It had gotten easier.
The beauty of the place distracted her from the grief she’d felt as a girl—not yet a woman—the first time she walked down these paths hugged by trees and manicured grass. It took years for her to visit the graveyard again after the first time. Mostly because she’d convinced herself that even though her parents’ bodies rested here, she didn’t feel their souls, too.
Her perspective—but not her belief about the souls—changed when Gracen got a little older and realized there was really no one but her to visit her mother and father. No one to wipe clean their stone marker made up of two pillars of black marble with a bench connecting the middle. No one to stop and simply say hello.
No one but her, it seemed.
Whether their souls could be found in this place didn’t really matter—a part of them was here. Alone. That’d made her even more sad. The very least she could do was visit.
So, while she didn’t feel Phil and Marla’s presence during her seasonal visits, on which she always brought along a microfiber cloth to wipe down their stone, Gracen make it a point to carve out time in her busy days to come to the graveyard tucked away at the far south side of town. Owned and maintained by a nearby Baptist church, it was one of the largest graveyards in their valley town because of the fact anyone could be laid to rest regardless of their religious denomination.
Or lack thereof.
Gracen’s mother and father had been buried at the far end of the cemetery just beyond the branches reach of what had once been a juvenile maple tree. Over the years, that ten-foot tall tree had doubled in height and provided shade for her parents’ grave at midday.
The time she always chose to come.
Today wasn’t any different.
As she told Delaney she would do, Gracen went to work, saw every client on her schedule, and then took her noon hour to do exactly what she had planned—visit her parents’ graves. She’d intended to bring Malachi along, but she refused to dwell on it.
That, too, would come.
She eventually found her way to the far end of the walking path, beyond the line where the pin cherry trees ended. She was still twisting the cluster of mini cherry-like fruit when she came to stand at the foot of her parents’ graves. She placed the cluster on top of her mother’s headstone after brushing them over top of her father’s.
Sudden death was the worst.
Her whole life had changed in an instant, and she never had the time to properly process everything. That came later, but even then, a part of her felt stuck there—emotionally stunted in the same place she’d been when her grandmother woke her up with the terrible news.
Life took a lot.
It rarely ever gave back, though.
“Mimi’s really missing you guys,” Gracen said absentmindedly as she pulled the royal blue microfiber cloth from her messenger bag.
The stones got dustier in the summer and fall when less rain beat down the sky to help keep them looking nice. They still gleamed, but one could appreciate their shine and the white lettering on the fronts after Gracen took the cloth to the curved tops and flat marble faces. She always did the bench last.