Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Violet

Grassland Flowers

She is dreaming of her father. He is walking through a grassland scattered with flowers, surrounded by a flock that is the size of an ocean. Or is it a sky? The sheep populate the endless landscape like miniature cream clouds. She can feel the woolly fleeces scratchy against her legs. She is trying to get to him but cannot reach him. Her legs are slow and heavy, each step almost more effort than she can make.

Then, just when she thinks she will never find him again, he turns and smiles at her, waving his old brown hat in great circles in the sky.

Waking, there is a glimmer of her father nestling in her mind, and this momentarily eases the chill of remembered death as she breaks the surface of the dawn.

And then come thoughts of the daughter he never really knew. She thinks of the plump snug softness of her sister's hand in hers, and she turns her head away from her cabinmate's inquisitive gaze. She will not show her tears to another.

As she shivers into her dress, she wonders if it is more painful to mourn the dead or the living.