Me at 60's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Four years had passed since her father died. This July her mother would have been gone twenty-five years. Neither of them had a grave. Her mother's ashes had never come to her, and her father's had gone somewhere she could not reach. She had carried the two dates in her head like appointments she could not cancel. On the morning of July 2, she sat up on the couch and decided she was done carrying them without a place to put them down. She took her coffee to the small balcony at the back of the apartment. The building sat low, its first floor tucked into the ground, and the balcony hung just above the yard. A rosebush grew against the fence, thick with red and pink blossoms. She had watched it come in all June. She thought: there. That is the spot. She had bought the two urns online in the spring and kept them in the closet, wrapped in a towel. She had not told anyone. She brought them out now and set them on the kitchen table. The blue one said MOM, 1942 to 2001. The pale green one said DAD, 1941 to 2022. Both were empty. She had no ashes to put in them. She had known that when she ordered them. Her hip complained when she carried them down the stairs. She took one at a time. She set them on the ground near the rosebush, on a flat patch where the grass was worn. She went back up and brought down a small folding stool and a mug of fresh coffee. She sat. She did not say a speech. She said their names out loud, once each. She said she was sorry she had not made it to the hospital. She said she was sorry about the phone calls that had not gone through. She told her mother that her granddaughter lived upstairs now and was doing alright. She told her father the coffee was good today. Her hip burned. She let it burn. A bee moved through the roses and left. Her daughter came down after a while and stood beside her without speaking. They looked at the two urns together. Her daughter asked if she wanted them left out there. She said yes. She said she would bring them in at night and set them back out in the morning, and that would be the shape of it. She went back upstairs slowly. The dates were still the dates. The ashes were still not hers. But the two names were in the yard now, under the roses, where she could go and sit. She had stopped waiting for a grave to visit. She had made one. She set her empty mug in the sink and thought about the next small thing: a place of her own, downstairs maybe, closer to the yard.