The Seventh Pallbearer

The day my grandmother died, a young woman in a vintage 1950s wedding dress stood silently by the casket all night. During the burial procession, six burly men sweat profusely trying to carry the heavy coffin, yet the young woman supported the back end with one hand, not breaking a sweat. As the casket was lowered, she tossed a perfectly preserved, petrified white rose onto the lid. I asked my mother who the strange woman was. She turned pale, covered my mouth, and whispered, "That is your grandmother when she was twenty." But my grandmother died at 83. Later, clearing out the attic, I found a faded photograph: my grandmother at twenty, wearing that exact wedding dress, standing beside a freshly dug grave with a white rose on the headstone.