yesterday’s silent light

 

Yesterday my sisters, nieces and I visited Mom’s grave. We took her roses, big fat cabbage roses in peach and scarlet and elegant American beauties in hearts-blood red swooning in fern. Riverside National Cemetery was sunny, breeze-swept, and full of other families paying respects and leaving behind bouquets of roses and lilies and tulips. We told Mom we loved her and missed her, and my four-year old niece asked if grandma was down there beneath the plaque, and we said yes. I was very glad to have given Mom roses every Mother’s Day. When going through a collection of old photos my sisters and I found the papery petals of aged rose blossoms.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay