Incompatible with Life

Sammy and I make an annual trip to the floral shop down the street on the day before Easter to pick up something for Anna. We always decorate her grave for Easter, and have already placed a palm cross and added silk irises beside the headstone. However, the Easter Bunny doesn’t visit the cemetery and we hate for Anna to be left out, so we leave flowers on Easter to make sure Anna knows we miss her. And there’s something about fresh blooms that celebrates the promise of the resurrection. Sammy is a discerning and opinionated shopper who takes the lead on these missions. Perusing the selection of long stemmed roses in the cooler, she quickly dismissed the peach and red and fuchsia-rimmed yellow, and picked out the pale pink spray roses. “How many?” the clerk asked. “How many?” I repeated, nudging Sammy to make the decision. “I don’t know…seven?” “Seven?” It seemed like an unusual number. “Seven. I don’t know how many to get, but I like the number seven.”