Solemnly, I gaze at the beautiful violet, the pale purple of its petals mirroring the color of my own eyes. But I’m not marveling at its simple beauty. I’m thinking darker thoughts, my mind trapped in an eternal night where neither moon nor stars shine. I’m wondering how fate could be possibly be cruel enough to take him away after such a brief time. Wondering why he left me with a flower, something that costs me so much pain and sorrow to look at. For I feel like this blossom is mocking me. It’s telling me that our happy relationship was not meant to last. It’s saying that nothing so perfect and beautiful can endure. Because its own petals, once so smooth and flawless, are already beginning to wilt. Even its slender, elegant green stem is starting to wither. And soon the whole flower will be dead and gone, just like our love already is. Just like he already is.

But I can’t join him, not now, no matter how much I wish to. Because I promised to him that I’d live. It was the last promise that I ever made to him.
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He’d grabbed onto my hand with an astonishing strength for one whose fire was slowly burning out. “Just promise me,” he had demanded gently yet firmly, “just promise me that you’ll go on living. For both of us.”
I hadn’t been able to resist his rich brown eyes, his deep, masculine voice. I was already trapped in the fathomless depths of his dark eyes, just as I had been the very day we’d met. “I promise,” I whispered, forcing the words through a throat constricted with tears.
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And I can’t break my words, not when they were his dying wish. Not when they meant so much to him.

Something else holds me back, too. Besides the delicate violet, his final words are all that I have left of him to hang on to. So I’ll live–for him and for myself. Even if it breaks my heart to live a life like this. A life that’s utterly void of his warmth, of his calming, loving presence.

I look back down again at the flower that he left behind for me. Look at the emerald stem, amethyst petals, and the drops of liquid diamond. Suddenly, a small yet definite smile tugs at the corners of my lips.

Because now the violet has a meaning. And I understand the truth that lies behind his final gift to me. The flower isn’t the gift. Rather, it’s what lies upon the flower.

Gently, I tilt the violet to one side, watching as the glistening dewdrops slide off of its silky petals. Before the drops of water can fall to the grass beneath me, I catch two of them in my hand. The two perfect drops of dew sit there on my palm, completely motionless. Then, seemingly of their own accord, they begin to slide towards the center of my palm, as if there is an invisible force pulling the two dewdrops together.

Finally, when they merge into one indivisible droplet of water, I smile again. For this is what he had tried to tell me. That no matter what separates us, we’ll always be together again. And we’ll be utterly inseparable, just like the two dewdrops that became one. Because there’s a bond that lies deep within our hearts, an unbreakable connection that unites us both. And even though he has flown far, far away, to a place that my living self cannot reach, I know that I’ll see him again.

All around me, lingering in the gentle breeze that tenderly caresses my hair—just like his long, slender fingers had done so long ago—I hear his deep voice whisper, “Live, Rosa. Live for both of us. And I promise you that we’ll be together again.”