2022 WATTYS SHORTLISTED || After being forced into a marriage by her devoutly religious parents, Aspen's husband is diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, and she must find her purpose as well as fight feelings for her husband's nurse. || Aspen Wat...
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Five minutes is a weird amount of time. It's enough time to make a cup of tea or to run the hoover around the flat. It's not enough time to make dinner or to have a shower if your name is Aspen Watkins. But, these five minutes have gone by so slowly, it's felt like five weeks as I stare at the small patch of sprouting flowers beneath the tree. Monica messaged me to tell me she'd scattered him here, underneath his favourite spot in Southampton Common: the place where we'd sat and had so many picnics together, and the place where we'd come when we were overwhelmed after giving Gabriel away. She'd told me Summer had planted some forget-me-not seeds before her loss, so every year they'd sprout for him.
It's strange, coming back here on my own after everything that's happened.
I just wish there was a gravestone or something concrete to remember him by. Even though there are sprouts of flowers, there's nothing in this world concrete to show Joel existed. In a graveyard, the gravestones aren't much of a marker of anything but a skeleton. When the grass is grown back over the grave, no one will remember what the coffin looked like. No one will know which way the coffin faced, just that it's somewhere beneath the grass and the stone. The thing you sit in front of and speak to is the gravestone, not the person. The stone bears the name, the dates of importance and a small snippet of who that person was, but nothing more. That person is gone, but at least the stone will tell you who is there.
When archaeologists investigate the Ancient Egyptian tombs, they never know what they're looking for. They don't know holes in the sand will contain bones. The only time they know they're looking at a tomb is when they go into concrete, obvious things like a pyramid. Even then, there is nothing to show who is buried in that pyramid until they either find a hieroglyphic interpreter to read the sarcophagus, or they do DNA testing.
Especially for the Egyptians, who believe the dead will live on if the living says their name. I don't understand why people don't at least use gravestones or something to mark where a loved one is scattered or buried.
But that's when I notice it. I turn to my left and look hard at the sprouting flowers. They make a little shape of the letter j.
J for Joel.
I smile to myself. Trust Summer to do that; even I wouldn't think of that.
"This is so weird... I'm speaking to a tree, Joel. But this is apparently where you're scattered, so it's the best thing I have," I say. I sit with my back against the tree, staring at the flowers and hoping I'm not sitting on his ashes. But then it's been weeks now since she did it.
"I... I read your letter two days ago. I... I've finally mourned you. Or at least, I am. I think this might be the last stage of it. I don't even know how you measure that kind of thing."
