and from the inside in

At bedtime that night, my son asked me, “What is it like when someone passes away? What do they feel? What do they
see? Where do they go? What do they become?” I had no clear answers to offer. Instead I kissed him and stroked his
hair till his breathing settled.
But Stravroula didn’t settle. She lingered in the air around me, rich and full, her life too real to close a coffin lid on. I
thought of an afternoon decades earlier, as we sat in the cool of her garden after hours at the beach—her laughter
filling the air, the coffee she had brewed with careful hands waiting to be drunk, the future full in the unturned cup.
In my kitchen grows a plant started from a cutting taken from a tree in her yard, nestled in a simple clay pot. Like her, it
is rooted in earth, arching toward the sun.
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