“…planting the flowers was you,” the widow said. “Every spring since my Harold died, there have been fresh marigolds on his grave. His favorite. I never told anyone that. I thought it was a miracle.” She smiled at Bartholomew through her tears. “Then last month, I went early in the morning and saw you on your knees with a trowel. You planted his marigolds, and then you moved on to the next grave, and the next.”
My father-in-law looked down at his plate. My mother-in-law had both hands pressed over her mouth. The widow continued. “I asked the cemetery office. They told me you keep a list. Every grave that nobody visits anymore. Two hundred and twelve of them. You plant flowers on every one of them, out of your own pocket, every spring.”
Gerald stopped chewing. The widow reached into her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “The girl in the office gave me a copy of your list,” she said. “I wanted to thank you properly.” She set it on the table. Near the top of the page, in Bartholomew’s careful handwriting, was a name: Eleanor Price. Row 7. Roses, not marigolds. She liked yellow.
Gerald stared at that name. Eleanor Price was his mother. My mother-in-law’s mother. Gerald hadn’t visited her grave in eleven years. He’d paid for the headstone and never gone back. “Barty,” he said, and his voice cracked like something old. “You… you’ve been taking care of Mom?”
Bartholomew finally looked up. “Somebody had to talk to her,” he said quietly. “I tell her about the grandkids. I tell her you’re selling a lot of boats.”
The table went silent. Gerald set down his butter knife, put both hands over his face, and cried like I had never seen a grown man cry at a dinner table. The next Sunday, my father-in-law came home from the cemetery and told us he’d found someone else kneeling in Row 7, planting yellow roses. Gerald goes every Sunday now. He’s learned that a man with no conversation can say an awful lot to the dead.
