24/04/2025
“Flowers at the cemetery “
28mm 2019 -
I remember this day like it was yesterday. I can still feel the warmth of the sun on my shoulders, summer fading and welcoming autumn with a crisp embrace. It wasn’t a particularly special day—on the contrary, nothing more than ordinary. I had finished the limited errands my insecure and codependent anxiety would allow me.
I’d mustered the courage to drive my beat-up gold 2000s manual Stratus from our ranch to the iron workshop where Gabriel was working—oddly enough, the old crematorium at the back of the cemetery. I knew he worked there, but I tried not to go as often as possible.
For him, it was an empty, very warm room, where occasionally he would still find little trinkets left behind by once full-of-life souls who inevitably had to pass through that space. Consumed by the all-purifying fire that returns to the soil in forms of new earth. Sometimes even bones, jewelry, and odd remnants of medical procedures that would not melt in the heat. Abandoned, forgotten, and once loved. Now, souvenirs for the three intrepid iron workers who at first had looked at them with intrigue, but who now regarded them as everyday occurrences. It no longer bothered or surprised them.
For me, this place was a memory—one that no longer particularly hurt, but was like a tiny thorn in your toe. Not painful, but uncomfortable. Unpleasant and noticeable when touched.
My rushed goodbyes laid here—next to the ashes, gold teeth, and small fragments of bone. Swept away into a corner of the old crematorium.
I still feel the lingering touch of his hair on my young fingers, the confusion and uncertainty of the near future through the eyes of a young child. The courage and pretended adulthood assumed by a soul walking next to a shell.
And all I did was look at the flowers—not the dead ones on the cold slate of stone, no—the wild and free. How pretty and peaceful, growing at their own pace, their own pleasure and size. Such beautiful beings in the middle of a morbid truth.
And yet, peace was over me. The same peace as that day, years before. Everything there was different—except the flowers. The flowers at the cemetery never changed.
