Felix shone orange amongst all the black, all the grey of the headstones, and compared to him even the green of the grass seemed drab and dry. My wife’s relatives did not comment on his presence, even when I held him over the open grave so he might see his mother planted.

The hole dug for my wife was lined with concrete, and I almost panicked. If I had not had Felix to clutch to me, to comfort me with his bright calm, I would certainly have thrown myself into the pit to keep my wife from being lowered in. She had always told me to cremate her, to spread her ashes by the ocean. She said, I never want to go in a box.

But the nature of her child, the nature of her death, these were not things of the ocean, not things of dust and wind. Her nature was of the earth, rich as dirt, and it was dirt to which she belonged. When I arranged for her burial I bought the meanest pine box in the hopes that it would decay all the sooner. I had not been warned about the concrete.

Don’t worry, I whispered to Felix, while some priest of my wife’s family’s choosing lied prettily about a woman he had never met. Don’t worry, it may take longer, but the concrete too will rot, the concrete will crack and split and crumble. No box can keep your mother’s spirit trapped forever.

Did I ever tell you, I whispered, about the time a cabbie tried to cheat us by driving three or four blocks out of the way, thinking we were too lost in each other’s company to notice, or strangers to that city, or some such thing, and your mother refused to pay the man a penny more than she thought he deserved, which was nothing, so he locked the doors and said he would not let us out until we paid, and your mother so cursed at him, so pelted him with words that he opened the doors just to escape from her.

My wife’s relatives shushed me, gave me dark stares and stern brows. I said, loudly, And you all built a box around her of your god and his strange rules, but she broke that, and found meaning elsewhere in the world. And I know you blame me for that, but I could not control her, could never make her change her mind. Once she threatened to leave me, so I locked her in our bedroom. She said if I did not let her out she would truly leave, and I did not want to be a broken box, so I opened the door. Even death is broken through by her, for she left me with a new life that holds some part of her life.