Buried Angels

Jacqui Wiley

In the summer of ‘91, Agnes and John moved in to their new home. They could hardly believe their luck. The owner had wanted a quick sale as he was moving away after losing his wife the year before. No family left, he’d told them. They were sympathetic but young enough not to ask where grief was taking him. The house was immaculate, the price within their reach.

In the summer of ’94, Agnes stood in their back garden, a protective hand resting on her growing belly. The air smelt of rain-soaked earth, the petrichor scent filling her nostrils. She smiled as John called her over to the patch he was digging.

Spade in hand, he stared down at the soil he had just turned. He had been digging a foundation for a small playhouse for their new arrival. What he unearthed made him freeze.

“I think you should see this.”

At the edge of the hole lay a rag. When he pulled it free, it unveiled a small stone angel facing upward. Agnes examined the dirty but beautiful statue, brushing the soil from its wings.

Within minutes, he uncovered three more, all lying flat, facing upwards.

They came to the conclusion the statues had belonged to the previous owners, respectfully buried, perhaps as part of a ritual of faith.

John pulled further at the cloth, and as he did, a small bone peered through. He dug down a bit deeper to reveal it was in fact an old blanket. A family pet, he thought as he tugged on it.

Then a small skull slipped from a fold and rolled, stopping at Agnes’s feet.

Agnes felt her unborn child kick.

The truth settled between them; these were not merely ornaments, they were memorials.

In the weeks that followed, an elderly neighbour told them of the couple’s sorrow. Four pregnancies in eight years. The first joyfully announced, the others kept silent.

Each time, they prepared for a new arrival. Each time the baby came into the world without drawing breath.

Years later cancer took the mother and last year, it took their father.

Agnes and John felt a strange warmth. They had stumbled upon the echoes of a love story, one of grief and devotion, preserved in the soil of their new home, buried in sorrow, each a life lost too soon.

In the summer of ’95, John and Agnes sat in their back garden with their sleeping daughter in John’s arms. They had named her Angel.

They gazed at the four beautiful angels standing in the manicured flower beds sheltered by the four Floribunda roses aptly named ‘Truly Loved’. Their magenta-pink, double blooms, slightly ruffled, filled the air with a faint scent.

They were in the presence of angels, the little angels that had once rested there. The beauty planted above is forever a reminder. They had been loved. Their little bodies now rested with their parents.

As John looked down at his daughter’s sleeping face, he thought of the man who had once stood in this same garden, hands deep in soil, heartbroken. His family, an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Grief had driven him away, but all his love had remained rooted in the soil.

They’d both made a promise to their daughter, Angel, on the day she was born, that each day they would take time to smell the roses and enjoy the little things in life.

Jacqui Wiley is a member of Inklings Writing Group, who meet on Tuesdays at 11am and Wednesdays at 7.30pm in the Annebrook House Hotel. Aspiring writers welcome.