30. Finn
30
FINN
Easton had asked if I wanted to grab dinner with him, but I’d refused. I had my secret project to complete, plus my mind was too jumbled to be around anyone.
Once I finished up, I headed into town. The streetlights flickered on as the sun set, and I wandered aimlessly until I found myself in front of the Starlight Grove cemetery. I hadn’t been here since the day we buried my grandparents. I barely remembered that day. Just the smell of the wet earth, the feel of the sun shining down, and Lars and Easton refusing to leave my side.
I opened the metal gate now and wound through the gravestones until I found the one I was looking for.
Fredrik and Carina West.
They were buried together. They’d barely spent a day apart when they were alive.
Beloved grandparents and parents.
The grave was bare, and I hated that. I should have brought them flowers. I would tomorrow.
My eyes trailed down to the poem they’d included on the stone, one by Federico García Lorca .
Ay, the pain it costs me
to love you as I love you!
For love of you, the air, it hurts,
and my heart,
and my hat, they hurt me.
Who would buy it from me,
this ribbon I am holding,
and this sadness of cotton,
white, for making handkerchiefs with?
Ay, the pain it costs me
to love you as I love you!
I hadn’t understood it when my grandpa had chosen it after my grandma died, but reading the poem now, I thought I understood. My grandparents had experienced a lot of loss in love, but they had chosen it anyway.
They knew it would hurt, and they chose it anyway.
I leaned against the headstone and cried.