She wasn’t always a black bird overlooking the cemetery. She used to be a young girl running through green fields hand in hand with her best friend. Rose and Stathis were only ten when they promised to love each other forever. Then her mother died.
It’s not easy for a father to raise a daughter these days, imagine how hard it must have been a hundred years ago. He was a poor man, he was a barber in a small village where younger men had all left to go to war. Old people were saving their pennies for the children and for their funerals.
When the last crow of the village died at war, Vaios took the decision to open up a funeral business. Unfortunately he didn’t have any money to kick off his enterprise, so he married the late crow’s widow and took over the “office”. The widow was quite good looking but no one could say the same for his clients. His new wife tried to help him deal with the challenges of the job, but in the end it was only alcohol that could help him handle it.
The bluish cold corps in his back yard would not look any better after he dressed them up with their church clothes, and no matter how hard his wife tried to convince him that it was only natural for the soul to shed off the skin he would throw up at least ten times before he could finally finish up his job.
It’s ironic to put clothes to the clothes of the soul, that has left already, but people expect to see their dead looking at their best in the end. It’s impossible to fix the color of the skin but at least you can keep them clean and dressed up like [he] always did she said referring to the services the Crow was providing before him.
It is said that it was then when Vaios got the idea to put make up on them. His late wife was a former aristocrat that lost everything to the war, – everything but the powder for the nose and a number of rouge lipsticks. Of course he had no idea how to put make up on a face, and his wife refused to touch the dead despite her grand theories. He was left with no choice but to ask Rose to help him.
No one could ever say, life was easy for Rose before that. No. At the time children were born to provide, and if the fathers were unfortunate enough to have daughters, then the daughters were unfortunate enough to do a son’s and a daughter’s work. But Rose was a tough kid; resilient. She had survived plagues and hungers, while all of her older sisters and brothers had died before the age of three. But was she ready for this? Was she ready to change the face of death?
Imagine that you are a painter and they are your portraits her father said.
That’s what she told Stathis too, hoping that she would not lose him from a friend. Luckily for her Stathis loved ghost stories. The nights they hang around Rose’s back yard next to the dead and make up stories about them. Every now and then they would pretend to see a ghost walking around the coffins, and wonder if it was the deceased himself or a long gone beloved one, a father, a mother, an enemy or a friend. The next morning they would tell everyone what they saw. Surprisingly most people would actually believe them and tell them to others as their own.
Years went by, and while the whole world was dying, they were growing up happy and in love. It was a platonic love of course but it was a true and deep love. One night, at her 13th birthday, sitting out on the balcony of her house, Rose asked Stathis;
Will you marry me when we grow up?
Stathis paused for a minute. He looked at her. She was becoming prettier and prettier.
Of course. I want to marry you, but…
But?
But my parents won’t let me marry a crow...
A crow?
That’s how they call people who do funerals, like your father… you… they call you the young crow. But don’t you worry, because I have a plan! he whispered into her ear.
What kind of plan?
I will become a doctor and heal everyone so no one will die anymore and this way I’ll put your father out of business! Then he will have to open up the barber shop again, and we will be able to get married!
Rose smiled. She loved the plan.
Look! A ghost! she screamed and pointed to the sky. As Stathis turned his head up to see the flying ghost, he felt her lips touching gently on his cheek.
And so it was. Stathis was studying day and night to win a scholarship in the nearest city’s university. Rose was blooming, becoming more and more beautiful, puzzling the villagers whose expectations of a crow was far from that. The elders were teasing her from time to time on how they wish they died soon so she could give them a bath with their wives’ consent. And she was handling it all right. Or so it seemed at least. Something about her eyes was somewhat disturbing; as if the eyes kept the same expression irrespective if she smiled or cried. But she had Stathis, her savior to be, and that was more than enough.
The day Stathis got the university’s admission letter was the happiest day of their lives (and night). They would soon be married, so their separation would be only a temporary problem. They thought they could deal with. But how do you deal with separation from someone you have never ever been without?
They kissed and made love out in the fields where they grew up. It was beautiful and right and exactly what was meant to be. They promised to be husband and wife forever. The next morning Stathis left for the big city to fight death.
In the beginning Stathis wrote and wrote and wrote. Then the beginning came to an end, and Stathis didn’t write as much, and then he wrote even less and less until he didn’t write at all anymore. Rose feared something bad might have happened to him. She had to go find him! She told her father she had to leave but her father thought it was too dangerous for her to travel on her own. He also knew that Stathis was the only chance his daughter had to get married, so he decided to go with her. He was a tragic figure, the father. He knew that his decision to do funerals and involve his little daughter in this had damaged both her soul and social status. He often justified himself to himself that it was the need to survive that led him to it, but in the end he always concluded that he should have known better. He should have known that survival requires much more than food.
Anyway.
I will not go into the details of how they found Stathis, although I can tell you it wasn’t easy, but they did manage to find him through her father’s connections in the various hospitals (they sent him clients from time to time). They checked their luggage in a hotel and went straight to the hospital where they were told that he was practicing med.
When they arrived, they looked around at the hundreds of injured soldiers lying on the floor, on the beds, on chairs, everywhere. Did I mention it was in the middle of World War I? Vaios found the nurse he knew and asked her to tell Stathis they were there. The now established Doctor came out to meet with them, although he didn’t quite get from the nurse who it was that asked for him.
Suddenly, he found himself again in Vaios’ back yard, standing in front of his beloved Rose. Only this time they were surrounded by semi-dead people without make up. He couldn’t help but smile when he saw her. He extended his hands to her. She saw his hands and pulled back. Tears started falling from her eyes when she noticed his ring.
How can it be? We were married! We got married before you…
What are you talking about Rose? You didn’t really believe we got married, did you? We were kids! What did we know?
We kissed, we made… Rose couldn’t continue.
Stathis wanted to find the right words to explain himself but Rose was pushing him away making a big scene. Vaios took the hands of his daughter, kissed them gently and pulled her away from him. As they were walking away, they heard the nurse laughing and teasing Stathis.
Can you believe this crow?! She thought a doctor would marry her? Did you REALLY kiss her?
I wouldn’t kiss a crow if I were dead! he said.
Obviously he didn’t mean it. He was embarrassed and weak from guilt. But what was done was done. After all he had moved on. It was time that she did too, and there is never an easy way to go about these things.
Vaios and Rose returned to their village, but Rose never moved on. Instead her soul died slowly day by day. She became the exact opposite of her clients; a soulless living body. Her beautiful tall and thin posture changed into an unattractive walking skeleton, she grew grey hair and although she had become one of the richest women in the area, she kept wearing the same torn black clothes looking like a tormented black bird.
A true Crow.
In time she buried everyone; her father, her stepmother, her neighbors. It is said that no one ever saw her shed a tear.
Until Stathis died.
In his will he asked to be buried in his village by HIS Rose specifically; His Rose. His sons respected his last wish even though they had never heard of Rose before and their mother had died only recently.
When they met her, they were shocked by her appearance. But she seemed serious and they trusted her with his will.
It was a grand funeral. A true masterpiece in every way; the location, the flowers, the ritual, the music that was heard in the background during the last goodbye… the make-up. Stathis was and will remain in the history of dead people, as the man who looked better at his funeral than he did when he was alive.
You see, Stathis was a very ugly kid and an ugly man, that grew handsome thanks to her love.
Rose on the other hand was a beautiful kid and a beautiful woman, that grew ugly thanks to his betrayal.
But it was God's will, that they would be together again.
It is said, that Rose never left the cemetery after Stathis funeral. It is said, that a tear fell from the sky on her head and turned her into a black bird. Some people claim to still see the black bird from time to time; always there, standing on his glorious grave and looking up to the sky where the tear came from.
Original Story and Artwork by 