The Flower of Memory
by Michael Haynes
My fourteen-year-old daughter Sophia sets the flower, one of the last from our ruined
greenhouse, by the crude headstone I erected several weeks ago. The rose is a bright splash of
red against the stark white of August snow.
A recollection comes to me as I look at that flower, a quotation which seems appropriate now.
"There was a writer named J. M. Barrie," I say by way of introduction.
She looks up at me, pale blue eyes like her mother's. Eyes that will haunt me as long as I live,
though I have good reason to believe that won't be much longer. Good reason as well to believe
that it won't be much longer for any of us.
