As I fingered the soft red petals, I was torn between the impulse of crushing the frail flower in agony and preserving the flower for an eternity. It was a symbol of love- found and lost. This flower that I plucked from beneath the neat folds of her hair was the only thing keeping me sane. I knew I had to say goodbye, to let her go, but I couldn’t. My situation was so ironic that it would have been funny if it weren’t so sad- I had met her when she was treating a cancer patient, and I lost her to cancer. As I stood over her coffin, the sight of her pale lips, closed eyes and abnormally still body broke something within me.

The memory of her funeral haunts me every time I look at the rose, now safely kept between the pages of her favourite book and yet, everyday, I find myself twirling it between my fingers. I had somehow found comfort in a dead red flower.

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