Stanley stopped in front of the grave and looked at the black and white photo on it for a few moments like he always did. No matter how many years passed, the feeling was always the same. He missed her terribly, the pain would never be gone. He slowly kneeled and kissed the photo.

“Hello, Mary. How are you today, my darling?”

She would stare back at him with her beautiful, eternal grin. She looked lovely and happy, just as he always wanted to remember her. He sighed before placing the bouquet on the stone. He smiled at her.

“I have brought your favourite flowers, Mary. White roses. Do they also have white roses in heaven?”

He kept smiling. But now his eyes were dampening and blurring. He didn’t bother to wipe them. He was never ashamed of his tears. He heard a sound close by. That crrsht crrsht of someone swiping the ground.

“Life here is pretty much the same as always, Mary. Our kids are fine. I guess that no matter how old they are, they will always be our kids, right? Little Lucy has started school too. And John misses your biscuits like crazy. I keep trying to bake biscuits for him but they’re never as good as yours, no way.”

He scratched his forehead where it meets the nose and took a deep breath. For a moment he was silent. Crrsht, crrsht... that was the only sound, along with the birds’ song and some voices in the distance. Voices that had come to visit their long gone beloved ones.

“Hey, Stan. Howizt?” he heard a hoarse voice ask.

“Samuel...” he replied. “Nice job keeping the cemetery clean and pleasant.”

The gardener approached, coughing. He took a cigarette from his pocket.

“A man has to do his best, I guess.” he said, lighting it and taking a drag. The smoke swirled up in the air. “We never really get over it, do we, Stan? No matter how long they’ve been gone for.”

“Nah... never... we keep all the love inside. And all the pain. The bigger the love, the bigger the pain. Can’t have one without the other.”

Stanley looked at the grinning Mary on the picture and touched her round, cheerful face with the tip of his fingers. Samuel coughed.

“Yeah... I guess you’re right. Miss my son too.”

Stanley looked at the gardener. They both had lost someone in the same year, different months and different causes. Mary had lost a battle to cancer. Samuel’s son died in a car accident. Thirty years separated them. Samuel was observing the movements of a bee on a marigold around. Even that bee would one day be no more, but life wouldn’t stop, would it?

“It was a tragedy that your son departed at such a young age.” Stanley said, getting up. “Mary must be taking care of him.”

He took his hand to the gardener’s shoulder, who had just finished his cigarette, and squeezed it.

“I swear to God, my old man, that I don’t know where I get the strength to live every day.”

Stanley patted his shoulder a few times, empathic. Despite the pain of losing his beloved wife, he could not even start imagining Samuel’s pain.

“I asked myself the same question for long, Sam. But I guess the dead have their way of consoling us, somehow.”

The two men remained silent for a few moments that felt like forever as they thought about these questions that would never have answers. Not on this life at least. Stanley looked at Mary again. There she would be, her beautiful grin immortalised on the photo.

“It’s called memories.” Samuel said. “But I miss that boy a lot. He’d have gone far.”

Stanley didn’t resist this time and hugged the gardener. His left shoulder was soaked after a few minutes. Then he took his hands to Samuel’s own shoulders and looked at him straight in the eyes.

“We have to go for a beer or two one of these days, pal. I’m sure Richard and Mary would like to see us enjoying ourselves for a little while.”

“Yeah... I suppose.”

“You keep well. I will be back next week.”

He walked away perhaps a little quicker than he had wanted. Tears flowed down his cheeks again.

“You take care of that boy, Mary.” he whispered to himself, staring at the ground before him. “At least you were here for a while but that kid... Geez, Mary! No parent should ever have to bury their children.”