Court of the Myrtles by Lois Cahall Page B

some of these ole timer’s graves?” Alice strolls from stone to stone, her eyes taking in the inscriptions. “No, really, I’m serious. Have you read them?” she asks. “I like that one—right over there.” Alice makes her way to a random, grey-granite stone. She begins reading it: “‘If there’s another world, she lives in bliss. If there is none, she made the most of this.’ Words to live by, if you ask me,” she says with significance.
    I didn’t ask you, I think to myself. Just let me withdraw into my own self-pity.
    â€œOh look,” says Alice, with typically inappropriate lightness. “They’re preparing a plot.”
    I glance over to view a green tarp draped over freshly dug soil. So what. Big deal.
    â€œFuneral’s tomorrow, no doubt,” says Alice. “I bet it’s for old man Davis. You knew him?”
    I shake my head, wiping the tears around my lashes. I don’t care about ole man Davis or any of these people. I just want my mom back.
    â€œLost his wife a few years ago; used to be here all the time fixing up her grave. Explains why I haven’t seen him in a while. Oh no, wait, it’s not for him. I’m mixing him up with the bearded man who comes to visit his sister.” Now Alice is standing over where I sit on the damp ground. Still I say nothing.
    â€œRough one, eh?” she asks, rubbing at the top of my head. I recoil a bit though I hate to admit it feels nice to be mother-loved.
    â€œThe stages of grief never happen in the order they say. I mean the disbelief and the shock are always the starter but then it can go in any direction. Some folks feel yearning and despair first while others feel anger. Eventually we all get to acceptance.”
    â€œI’ll never accept it.”
    â€œIt takes time, Marla.”
    â€œEven this…now,” I say, moving my hands around my head. “Talking to the dead is like a monologue between me and me. Ridiculous. Pointless. I’m sick of pruning and planting for no good reason, wasting all this emotion, words, time,
gardening
, on someone who’s never coming back.”
    Alice looks at the new seedlings popping up around my mom’s stone before glancing to Joy’s grave with its overabundant and firmly established garden. She frowns. “You’re right, these graves are starting to look a little ridiculous,” she says.
    â€œI just want her back.” I say. “No more flowers.”
    â€œSo you’re doing rocks now?” Alice glances down at a series of stones that I’ve carefully laid out in a semi-circle.
    â€œThey’re special—striped ones. See?” A smile suddenly forms on my face. “My rock collection. Mom got me started when I was about six years old at the beach. I thought it was a stupid idea when she introduced it to me. By age seven it was a hobby, by fifteen it was an addiction.”
    â€œAnd now it’s an obsession,” Alice teases. “This one’s pretty,” she says, squatting down and touching a grey one with a jagged white line going down its center. “Looks like somebody almost painted it on. I bet your eyes go buggy trying to find a striped rock in the middle of all the solid ones on the shore.”
    â€œIt’s a challenge. My mom liked to do lots of silly little things that didn’t cost any money. She always said, ‘The best things in life
are
free… free to be!’” I pause a moment before wailing, “I miss her smell. I miss her hands. I miss her eyes squinting a smile at me for whatever good news I told her, even when it wasn’t so good.”
    â€œI know, honey,” says Alice.
    â€œHow am I supposed to live fifty more years without her? There’s so much more I wanted to say to her. I thought our time together would be longer.” Now I’m sobbing like a small child.
    â€œOh, sweetie….”
    â€œBut I