She the Girl
There was no one to claim his body. There was no one to claim the body of the eccentric man who'd shot himself a few days before his wedding to a lovely girl. So she begged her parents to claim it and bury him somewhere pretty, in some graveyard where there were at least trees and real headstones.
They did. He would have been her husband, after all, and it was only fair to try to make her happier. She didn't think anyone would understand being devoted to him, because why should parents or friends understand something like that? It's easier to feel misunderstood. But they did understand, and they buried him in a nice graveyard just as she'd hoped but not said.
They put him beside a bush with red flowers and gave him a small marble headstone that she wouldn't be ashamed of.
While she was still young, and before she married, she went to his grave and read there. It was all right to do that--it wasn't disrespectful, somehow. He liked it, she supposed. After all, he'd loved her. She sometimes read aloud, because she imagined him under the dirt, in the coffin, with his face smiling, hearing her voice seep down through the earth. She imagined that pleased him.
And when she was married, she put a bundle of small cherry branches on the grave, and left. Because people have to live, and no one can read by a grave forever. People have to grow up. You can't forget things, but you can't think about them all the time.
She imagined he was proud of her for knowing that.
Chapter Three.
Back to Chapter One.