Flowers for Suzy

(April 2011, Rising Stars Contest Winner) A deeply personal tale of a true love lost..

Flowers for Suzy
By Keaton Foster

“Such truth comes from the heart of me.”

It can be said that for a story to be truly powerful, it must hold some truth. Bits and pieces of the author’s life must intermingle with the fictional painting created by the words spilled onto the empty canvas before them.

This tale holds many personal truths. I miss you, Suzy.

Much beauty can be found in written words, especially when they express passionate love in vivid detail. The following words, poetically crafted into sentences, attempt to convey the truth of what this author believes is a masterpiece of love come and gone.

Love is an endless dream set in reality—a deep acknowledgment and belief in another to the point where they become everything. Love is there for all to feel, as long as we strive to embrace it.

That said, there is a dark, terrible, unrelenting side of love—a side that everyone must face and embrace at some point.

I am no different from most, except in one significant way. As I write this message of loss for the world to read, I am deep within the brutal, painful depths of love’s eventual end.

For my Suzy…

My dream has ended, and I find it impossible to cope. I had love, and now I have lost it in debilitating ways. I remain crippled by the unrelenting pain of losing my love.

I cannot move beyond the prison I now inhabit. Alone is a terrible place to be. Alone feels eternal when you know you will never again have the will or strength to love another as before. For me, I can only hope that in death I will be reunited with her, my one true love.

This is a sad truth I do little to hide.

There is not much in this life I feel I have done right. Confidence in my failures seems to express itself without my awareness. Perhaps their familiarity has made them more a part of me than anything else.

Little in this life has brought joy or accomplishment, save one exception—my absolute, unwavering, undeniable, unconditional love for my sweet Suzy.

I met her twenty-three years ago today—a fleeting moment in the grand scheme. Suzy Johnson was her maiden name before she took mine. I met her at the old Crossroads Diner, a place long vanished from my life’s landscape.

She was there with her mother, having brunch after church one sweet Sunday morning. We attended the same church, but truthfully, I was too busy praying for an angel to notice her.

In that moment, as she crossed my path, I was hooked. It took three years of pursuit to convince her to date me. Like me, she had endured a bad relationship and was wary of love.

In time, we overcame our fears, finding ourselves in each other’s eternal, loving embrace.

Once married, we wasted no time reigniting our vibrant love. We spoke of children, our future together, and our dreams as individuals and as a couple.

Suzy and I seemed to have it all in that brief period. Twenty-three years may seem long to most, but to me, it was a flicker in an inferno.

Today, as I walk through the vast green prairie unfolding before me, I close my eyes and picture my sweet Suzy.

Her endless smile shines. The curves of her face are soft as clouds in a clear blue sky. Her emerald-green eyes glow, expressing all she is without a word.

Her body flows like an endless river of possibilities. Each curve, each bend, is mesmerizing. I can still feel them as I trace the edge of the heaven she embodied.

A single tear falls—not of pain, but of remembrance.

Today, I am here in the meadows we walked together as a couple, searching for the perfect flowers for my sweet Suzy.

The sun shines from the heavens, its warmth touching my face in somber ways.

Across the meadow, I see a doe and her fawn grazing on wild blueberries. The mother’s subtle care conveys a love universal. Nature abounds, this place a marvelous example of all that is right in the world.

Suzy always looked her best in the morning sun. Her flowing hair shimmered in its rays. Her endless eyes reflected the golden light, amplifying it a millionfold.

She was my everything here—my love, my wife, the center of the universe brought down for me to hold. She was my friend, my lover, my mistress in the moonlight. She was all I could have hoped for.

The flowers I choose must be perfect, shining in the golden light as she did, representing all she was here.

As I roam the familiar prairie, I search for flowers that embody all she was to me.

For hours that feel like days, I search. Finally, in the sun’s golden light, I spot yellow flowers swaying in the summer breeze. Their petals, soft as silk, shine like jewels.

Drawn to their beauty, I pluck them one by one from the sun’s embrace, taking them from the soil they call mother. They will dry and wilt, their fate sealed by my need to express my love for Suzy.

I must deliver them quickly to convey their beauty. She deserves nothing less than a perfect bouquet.

“These flowers are for you, Suzy,” I say, placing them in a nearby basket. “They are perfect. You will not be disappointed.”

In time, I reach my destination—Suzy’s. The golden sun shines on her. The marble of her gravestone stands cold in the light. Each carved word of her epitaph rings true.

The flowers I placed yesterday have wilted. I kneel before my love, replacing them with new ones to represent life for a time. For months, I have returned daily to place flowers on her grave.

I lie on the ground beside her, in a spot reserved for me, staring into heaven’s eternal abyss. I know she is there, watching.

As I have many times, I speak, knowing Suzy hears me in her eternal home, devoid of me for now.

“You were my everything—my love, my wife, the mother of my child, my friend, my lover, my mistress in the moonlight. I miss you so much, my sweet Suzy. Rest in peace. These flowers are to let you know I still love you.”

I lie there all day; there is little else I can do. Night falls, darkness closes in, unrelenting until a new day’s sun returns.

I make my way home, to all I know without her.

I will return, as I have since her passing, to find the perfect flowers for her, to place them on her grave, to show that a love like ours will never end…



Flowers for Suzy Keaton Foster Copyright © 2011