“For every lie you told to keep us safe.

For every sacrifice you made in silence.” The wind took a few loose petals and carried them down into the grave, and I thought that was right — that some part of the apple, of the pancakes and the mornings and the ordinary sweetness he had built my childhood out of, should go down into the earth with him.

I had chosen the apple blossom on purpose, because it was the closest thing I had to a language for what he was to me.

Not roses, which are what you bring to a stranger’s funeral.

Not lilies, which are for grief in the abstract.

An apple blossom, because of the pancakes — because for as long as I could remember, the smell of apples cooking had meant my father is home and it is morning and I am safe. He had made those pancakes for a four-year-old to comfort her, and then for a girl, and then for a grown woman with a daughter of her own, and every single time, without my ever knowing it, he had been reaffirming the quiet promise he made in a motel room before I could form memories: I will keep you, and I will keep you gently, and you will never feel the weight of what it costs me. The blossom was my way of telling him I finally knew.