I left about 5 rose petals sitting on the kitchen table the entire time Samantha was gone. They were from a flower I brought her a long time ago, and it sat in a vase. I guess when she took the vase, some petals fell from it and they were all that was left for me when I came into the house back in April. I said I wouldn’t ever distrub the petals until she came home. SO there they sat, in the big damn middle of everything. Cali and I had to eat around them, do paintings around them, and sometimes she would ask why there were dead plants laying on the table that we couldn’t throw out. “Because sometimes, things that appear dead are just waiting to be reborn.”. When Samm and a friend moved the last of her belongings back into the house, back came the vase. We were eating dinner last week when it hit me that the flower was still there in the vase. I scooped up the petals finally and placed them in an open oyster shell that Cali had found on the beach earlier that day. Things that appear all dried up and dead to the world aren’t that way forever.