Work Text:
After all these years, she still carves gravestones by hand. Though machines are faster, she prefers the old ways, feeling the grief and the love in the stone.
This couple’s design is simple. A double upright with rounded edges, a pearlescent, midnight blue granite tablet and base. No inlaid photos or newfangled video codes, just plain words and good, solid stone.
Consulting her work order, she carefully carves the men’s surname—a long one, hyphenated—in large letters at the center, then their individual given names and dates below, to the left and right. Her heart always aches when carving one death date but not the other, the blank space unbalanced. The one gentleman passed first, now freshly buried in the cemetery. Over 50 years married, she heard. She hopes they won’t be separated for long.
She turns to the top of the gravestone, above the surname. Some people request images of intertwined wedding rings, hearts, or roses. Others choose praying hands, stark crosses. For these men—a pair of leaves, one oak, one maple, suspended mid-float.
Below their names comes their epitaph. She always wonders what couples’ epitaphs mean, the ones that aren’t obvious in their grief, prayers, or remembrance. A sweet nothing? An inside joke? As she inscribes the words these two chose—Because you love me, and I love you—she thinks they sound like an answer.