Pearls

Granny died in the Spring.
Her favorite season everything was new, life was beginning again.
When I was a little girl, we’d spend hours planting yellow Texas roses together.
Watching their vines creep up her wooden stand we set up behind them.
Filling in the spaces around with Stargazer lilies, my favorite.
No flowers grew if Granny didn’t plant them.
Now I’ve grown up,
And she’s left me to face the world without her.
Like a fairy godmother,
She was in my life, filling it with magic, and light.
And then she disappeared, back to a place I cannot follow.

Even though wrinkles have taken over her face.
I could still see the young woman sitting on a 1942 Chevy Fleetline, in her favorite plaid skirt and pearls.
I had seen the picture so many times, even had it framed by my bed.
She was timeless.  
Now it sat, by her casket.
I refuse to remember her funeral.
I refuse to remember falling to my knees at her visitation, begging her to open her eyes,
and tell me it was going to be alright.
I had dealt with death before, Papa, Aunt Jeanie, Cousin Wade.
But Granny’s was different.
She had been a constant presence in my seventeen years on this earth.
My heart couldn’t comprehend she was gone, gone, gone.

Now I stand by her grave home from college for winter break.
I’m twenty-one now, three years have passed since she died.
Her pearls around my neck, hidden beneath my scarf.
Holding a bouquet of yellow Texas roses in my hand.
A gentle caress of wind goes across my frozen face.
I can almost feel Granny's fingertips.
And her whispering the promise that Spring will come again.