I met a hope of something shortly after Torri died. The hope was delivered in gentle, small ways by someone I knew more than 20 years before. I needed little else. The hope had no familiar sound, or feel to it, but it was hope.
I was invited to go to where the hope came from, a foreign country. I was in so much pain I went, not knowing the sounds, the feel of it. The tight little country was the same place Torri and I had decided to go the summer of 2006. Its differences were my salve. There was hope.
When I arrived off the flight, the hope was given to me in the form of this shiny, silver rose. I brought the rose back and after it sat on the dashboard of my car, I put it where it belonged of course. At The Hill. It has never rusted, tarnished, or broken. No one has ever taken it. All the private expressions and predicaments of my pain there, and still, it always caught my eye. Because it was always reflecting light. Even in the snow, the darkness, it stuck out.

The past few months her death has kept happening. New information, new ways to feel it. Then, this week Torri’s laptop died. The object I would take away when she was not listening. It was her pride. THE APPLE. Mom only knew PC’s. The dirt and crumbs remained wedged in between its white Apple keys. I did not anticipate how its death would do me in. I have not been to The Hill for a while.
I went tonight. The Hope Deliverer had come and taken it away. The rose was gone too, along with some other things left there by the same delivery person. Its stem was closest to where she was when she was whole. I always used to think of that.
Hope wanted its revenge. Hope wanted the one whose heart cracked, to regret her belief in Hope.
The hand that ripped the hope out of the sacred ground delivered nothing I guess. It was me, us. Because I could not tell you how to go about taking away hope from the small spot of earth where a dead child’s body rests in peace.