As part of an annual ritual, the unnamed narrator goes to the cemetery, where she lays flowers on her late husband's grave. Although we never get to find out much about their marriage, one can infer from the narrator's performance of this commemorative act that she loves her late husband and misses him an awful lot.

One senses, though, that due to her advancing years, the old lady finds this annual journey something of a struggle, as just about everything else in her life has become. This would explain why she luxuriates in the peace and quiet of the graveyard and wishes that she could lie down and go to sleep among the sea-grass soft to the touch.

During her outing to the graveyard, the narrator compares her husband's simple grave with the grand, imposing tomb that houses her parents' remains. The difference between the two graves causes the narrator to ruminate on the after-life. If there is such a thing as an after-life for the soul, she wonders then, will such blatant inequality exist there too? In any case, this world, the world of here and now, appears to be getting ever more narrow.

This could be seen as a reference to the increasingly restricted nature of the narrator's life as she gets older. It is also a foreshadowing of the physical restrictions which the old lady's bath places upon her and which causes her to get stuck and call for help.