2- lily
13- marigold
15- chyrsanthemum
and
3- yellow
"I remember the joy we shared. I grieve what was taken from us. Though love has faded into memory, I still carry it."
I knew what the bouquet meant before I knew who had left it.
Perhaps that is the strange thing about flowers. They do not need a voice to speak. They do not need a name attached to them or a message tucked beneath their stems. They carry their own stories, their own memories, their own quiet confessions.
The bouquet rested near my hollow in the early morning, when the world was still softened by mist and the grass bowed beneath the weight of dew. Three flowers woven together in golden shades—the lily, the marigold, and the chrysanthemum.
A strange offering.
A beautiful one.
A painful one.
A message that pierced my heart and ignited my grief before I even thought to feel it.
It was nearly ten years to the day since I lost her. Ten years, and even though I had learned to live on, to carry the grief and find joy and light in my life as she would have wanted for me, there were moments when it hit me. And this offering, as small and well meaning as it may have been... it nearly brought me to my knees.
For a moment, I simply stood there and looked at them, unable to move. The wind carried their scent toward me, gentle and familiar, and suddenly I was not standing alone beneath the gray sky.
I was back beside her.
I was back in a time when the world felt endless.
Before I knew that a heart could continue beating even after losing the one who made it feel whole.
The yellow lilies reminded me of joy.
That was the first thing I thought of.
Not the sorrow. Not the empty space I still left beside me when I rest beneath the trees at night. Not the silence where her voice used to be. The space now occupied by another, not to take her place, but who had helped me to heal and be whole again.
Joy.
I think that is what makes grief so complicated. We speak of loss as though it is only sadness, as though remembering someone who has passed is only about the wound left behind.
But she was never just the wound.
She was the warmth before it.
She was laughter carried through the meadow. She was sunlight across my back after a long rain. She was the sound of another set of hooves beside my own as we wandered without needing a destination.
She was every little moment that I thought would last forever because, at the time, I could not imagine a world where it would not. It was the feeling of being young and invincible, without a care in the world.
I remember how she loved flowers.
Not because they were rare or perfect, but because they were alive.
She found beauty in the smallest things—the first bloom after winter, the tiny flowers hidden among the grass, the way wild blossoms would bend and rise again after a storm. She always believed the world was kinder than it appeared. She helped me believe it, when I nearly lost my faith and hope, nearly broken by the herd and family who were meant to be my blood and love me, despite everything.
I admired that about her.
I loved that about her.
She taught me to look closer.
To notice.
To cherish.
I wonder if she knew, when she taught me those things, that one day I would need them to survive without her.
The marigolds were the ones that made me lower my head.
Flowers of remembrance.
Flowers of grief.
Flowers for those whose names we continue to carry long after their voices have become echoes.
I used to think that time would eventually make losing her easier.
That perhaps the seasons would pass enough times that the ache would become smaller. That one day I would wake and her absence would not be among the first things I felt.
But time does not erase what matters.
It only teaches you how to carry it.
The world expects grief to have an ending. A final day where the sorrow disappears and you become yourself again.
But that is not what happens.
When you love someone deeply, losing them changes the shape of you.
You do not return to who you were before.
You become someone new.
Someone who knows the weight of an empty space.
Someone who understands that a single memory can be both a gift and a wound.
There are mornings when I still turn my head expecting to see her beside me. And when I see someone else, someone who held my heart together and helped me become whole again, who I do truly love even if not the same. I still feel a twinge. A sense that even though I am happy, and it is what she would want for me, it is not something I should have. It is not something I deserve.
A familiar and different movement in the corner of my eye.
A familiar scent, not my current mate, carried on the wind.
A sound that makes my heart leap before reason reminds me that it cannot be her.
Those moments are cruel.
And yet…
I would never wish to lose them.
Because forgetting her would be a second loss.
And I have already lost enough.
The chrysanthemums were the quietest of all.
They spoke not of the moment she left, but of everything that remained.
Of devotion.
Of enduring affection.
Of a love that changes but does not disappear.
I think that frightened me most in the beginning—the thought that someday I might move forward and leave her behind.
That healing would mean I loved her less.
That finding happiness again would somehow betray the happiness we once shared.
But I understand now that love is not a path that ends when someone is gone.
It becomes a part of the road beneath your feet.
She is in the way I pause to watch the sunrise because she once told me how beautiful the colors were.
She is in the way I am now able to protect fragile things because she taught me gentleness.
She is in the quiet moments when I find myself smiling at memories I thought would only bring pain.
She is woven into me.
Not like a chain.
Like a root.
Something that holds me steady even when the storms come.
I do not know who left these flowers.
Perhaps someone who knew her.
Perhaps someone who knew me.
Perhaps someone who simply understood that some days are heavier than others.
But I am grateful.
Because they reminded me of something I had nearly forgotten.
Grief is not the opposite of love.
It is proof of it.
The flowers will not last.
The lilies will eventually bend. The marigolds will fade. The chrysanthemums will lose their golden petals to the wind.
Everything living eventually returns to the earth.
I know this better than most.
But I have also learned that endings do not mean something was meaningless.
The flower does not regret blooming because winter comes.
The river does not regret flowing because it will one day meet the sea.
And I do not regret loving her because I had to lose her.
If I could return to those days—the days when she stood beside me, when our paths stretched out before us, when I still believed we had endless time—I would not ask for anything different.
I would not ask for more years.
I would not ask for a different ending.
I would simply ask for one more moment.
One more walk through the fields.
One more quiet evening beneath the stars.
One more chance to press my muzzle against hers and tell her what she already knew.
That I loved her.
That I always would.
The bouquet remains beside me now.
A small reminder.
A quiet message written in petals and color.
I remember the joy we shared.
I grieve what was taken from us.
Though love has faded into memory, I still carry it.
And perhaps that is enough.
Perhaps carrying her with me is not a burden after all.
Perhaps it is the final gift she left behind.
A love that asked for nothing. A love that remains. A love that, even after all this time, still blooms.
