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“Katniss, please stop.”
“No, Peeta. I’m not going to stop.”
I continue to dig up the grass, both the sections where it grew bright and green and the sections where nothing sprouted. “I’ll just try again – I’m sure it’ll all grow evenly this time.”
Peeta sighs. Loudly. “Yes, but this is the third time you’re doing this. You know he wouldn’t care –”
He pauses then, knowing full well what he was about to say. “He wouldn’t care what, Peeta?” I ask furiously, standing up to face him. “He wouldn’t care that his grave looks like crap? Because that’s how he lived, right? His house looked like crap, he looked like crap, he never gave a crap? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“No,” he replies calmly. “I’m just saying that he wouldn’t want you to go through the trouble.”
I look away from him, gripping the shovel in my hand so tightly I think it might break. “Well, too bad,” I say, lowering myself back down to the ground. “This is just like him, by the way. Even dead, he still refuses to let anything around him be beautiful.”
I continue to dig even as Peeta kneels down beside me. “I’m getting worried about you, Katniss. You never really…I mean, I don’t think you’ve properly grieved yet. I don’t think you’ve even cried…”
My hands go still. He’s right. I haven’t cried yet…but why does that matter? “Maybe I don’t want to cry.”
He places his finger on my chin and turns my head to face him. “You may notwant to cry,” he begins, smiling sadly, “But I think you need to cry.”
I shake my head and turn away. “I think if I cry…if I cry, then I’m accepting that he’s really gone. It becomes real. So I’d rather just dig, if it’s alright with you.”
Peeta says nothing as I start up again, driving the shovel into the ground, bringing up heaps of grass and dirt. He doesn’t leave, though – he continues to kneel there next to me, and I start feeling suffocated. But I dig, and dig, and dig, only stopping when I feel drops of water on my face. I blink and look up, expecting there to be rain, but the sun is shining brightly and there’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s not until I find it hard to breathe that I realize I’m crying.
So, I drop the shovel. And I cry.
I cry for my mentor, the one who kept me alive. I cry for my friend, who was at one point my only source of comfort. I cry for the father figure who gave me away at the Justice Building. I cry for the man who shed a tear the moment he held our daughter in his arms…it was the first tear I’d ever seen from him.
Peeta holds me as I cry, and cry, and cry. My tears water the earth below us, until I have no more left to give.
Eventually, he carries me back to our house, and I sleep. I dream of Haymitch, clean and sober, surrounded by his friends and family – the people he loved before us. I wake happy, filled with hope that he’s finally in a place where his demons can’t haunt him anymore. A place where he’s free. At peace.
A few weeks later, I visit his grave. Every inch of it is covered in lush, green grass. I look up to the sky and smile.
“You old bastard.”