Rosary girls

5 6

The headstone is cold. The name and date are obscured by time and wind- borne debris. I clean it off. I run my index finger along the chiseled numbers. The date brings me back to a time in my life when all things were possible.A time when the future shimmered. I think about who she would have been, what she might have done with her life, who she might have become. Doctor? Politician? Musician? Teacher? I watch the young women and I know the world is theirs. I know what I have lost. Of all the sacred days on the Catholic calendar, Good Friday is, perhaps, the most sacred. I've heard people ask: If this is the day that Christ was crucified, why is it called good? Not all cultures call it Good Friday. The Germans call it Charfreitag, or Sorrowful Friday. In Latin it has been called Parasceve, the word meaning preparation. Kristi is in preparation. Kristi is praying.

When I left her, secured and snug in the chapel, she was on her tenth rosary. She is very conscientious and,from the way she earnestly says the decades, I can tell that she wants to please not only me-after all, I can only affect her mortal life-but the Lord, as well.

The chilled rain slicks the black granite, joining my tears, flooding my heart full of storms.

I pick up the shovel, begin to dig the soft earth.

The Romans believed that there was significance to the hour that signaled the close of the business day, the ninth hour, the time when fasting began.

They called it the Hour of None.

For me,for my girls, the hour is finally near.