White Rose

The drive through Alberta with my Grandmother and my Mom was quiet. That's not to say that we didn’t speak to each other, but our voices remained soft. It was as if speaking too loud would awaken the feelings we had buried beneath layers of earth, white petals and scraps of metal.

In my head I imagine that when the vehicle hit my little cousin part of the truck was destroyed when he was. That some part of him left a permanent mark as he left this world. But I know that a semi-truck going that fast down a highway likely didn’t even dent when it met with the seventeen-year-old’s body.

He was a white rose.

White because of the incompleteness of his story. The innocence in his eyes. A page with few lines written.

A rose because of his heart. The love for his family. For his faith. The love that we had for him.

We sat on the final pew at the very back of the church. Although he and I grew up together I did not sit with the other close family members at the front. This was not my place. If I sat any closer to the priest my heart would have caught fire; not from perceived sins but from the heat of my sadness.

Before the funeral I saw sadness as cold. I saw rigid cracks that thundered across frozen lakes. Daggers of ice hanging from tear-filled eyes. Hands frozen in positions of praying, of begging.

But as I sat in that church at the southern edge of Alberta in mid-July, the black of my dress absorbing the heat, I realized that there is a hot kind of sadness too. One that makes your skin cry. One that makes your chest burn. One that sucks all the oxygen out of you to feed the flames of grief.

There was such little moisture I was unsure if I would be able to cry. But as I watched my Aunt carry what was left of her son in a tiny wooden box the tears came. They burned my already burning skin, evaporating before they could slide off my chin.

They buried him with a bouquet of white roses.

A funeral attendant handed a white rose to each of the members of the immediate family. My remaining cousins called out to me to make sure I got one as well. I still don’t know how to feel about that flower.

An intergenerational car. A tiny coffin.