by Lynne Hinton
He spoke to her again. “What was it, a birthday? anniversary?”
He had come around the counter and was standing closer to her. He knew she always came in to buy flowers for her daughter’s grave because he had asked her once before. They had not talked about the death; so he did not know how she died or how the young woman was doing with the loss. She always seemed clear and levelheaded when she bought the flowers. But he understood that what appeared on the outside was rarely a reliable indicator of what was going on inside.
The question surprised her. “Birthday,” she responded quietly.
The florist was tall and thin, with a head full of white hair. The features on his face were soft but prominent, and his eyes were blue and clear. He stood there, in front of her, with his arms hanging loosely by his sides. He seemed sad but present; and he just held her there as he studied her, filling her with a strange sense of warmth and tenderness.
She became uncomfortable with the gaze and went back to examining the plants in the store.
“I’ve been there,” he said in reply.
Nadine turned to him again. She seemed confused.
“Not in Chapel Hill, I mean. I was in the Veterans Hospital in Durham. I had a stint in the army.” He did not take his eyes away from Nadine.
Nadine knew herself well enough to know that in past times she would have normally ended the conversation by telling him that she wasn’t interested. She had heard enough sorry stories in her life and especially in the past few weeks, and even if his was more sorry than hers, more sorry than anybody else’s in the psychiatric hospital where she had just been, it wouldn’t, it couldn’t, ease away her pain.
She started to tell him she only wanted to buy a flowering plant, a nice aster or cactus. But before she could say anything, he had started talking.
He rolled up his sleeve and showed a big scar on the inside of his left arm. “I was aiming for my heart, but I missed my chest and hit myself here.” He pointed to the old wound just above his elbow. “Didn’t do anything but scramble my muscle and get blood all over everything.”
He rolled down his sleeve and buttoned the cuff. “Well, that and get myself locked up with a hospital full of crazy people.”
“But I got some help,” he said and walked behind the counter and started straightening up.
Nadine fingered the fern and the jade plant, thinking about what the old man had said. She was not put off by his scar or the easy way he had told his story. She appreciated his honesty, his willingness to share his own grief, and felt drawn to him in the way drunks are drawn to other drunks.
She walked closer to where he was standing. She reached up and touched him near the place he had shown her, high up on his arm, the healed wound of his attempt to die.
“You glad you missed?” she said after a bit. She watched him carefully, waiting for his reply.
“Some days.”
She sighed, thinking that was not quite the answer she had wanted.
He pulled his arm away and gathered up a few pieces of green tissue paper that were left by the phone.
“And then some days I think it would have been best if I had succeeded.” He folded the tissue and placed the paper in front of him.
Nadine stood near him and listened.
“My wife was everything to me.” He said it like he had been asked.
“When she died I figured I’d never be able to be by myself, without her.” He stacked a pile of forms together and put the phone book beneath the phone.
“And this place?” He glanced around the shop. “This is all her, everywhere my eyes land, it’s Georgette.” He ran his right hand up and down the scarred arm nervously, then stopped.
“Everybody thought I’d sell it after it happened.” He shoved papers under the shelf and placed scattered pens and pencils in the plastic cup.
“I actually put the place on the market and almost sold it to her sister.” He hesitated. “Then, I don’t know. I kept wanting to be here and not be here. I’d run out of here after an hour, and then I’d get up in the middle of the night and drive out to this place just to sit in the dark. It was torture either way.”
He shook his head and bent down to pick up some queen’s lace that had fallen on the floor. He twirled it in his hands.
“I know some folks pack up everything and try to put the person out of their mind, try to get away from anything that reminds them of the dead. Makes the wound feel too fresh, I guess.” The old man drew in a long breath.
“And I did try that. But I don’t know.” He focused on Nadine. “I reckon everybody does it different. There sure ain’t no instruction manual on how to grieve.”
Nadine smiled.
“So I kept this place. And somehow I like being near my wife, near the things that meant something to her. It’s comforting in some strange sort of way, to carry on with the things she loved.”
He laughed. “I suppose that ain’t the way your doctors would suggest to you on how to get better.” He winked at Nadine, remembering how the psychiatrists and nurses talked.
“But having this shop, remembering how she enjoyed arranging beauty, still doing her work, smelling her every time I handle a flower…” He paused and then continued, “Somehow it keeps me getting up in the morning. Keeps me interested enough to stay living.”
There was silence and Nadine didn’t know what else to say.
“Some days are a hell of a lot better than others, though,” he added.
A large transfer truck thundered by the shop and both of them turned toward the door.
“But today”—he faced Nadine and smiled—“today is a good day.” He placed his hands on the counter and leaned on them. “The sun is shining. I got fresh beautiful flowers. There’s lots of orders to fill; and I got the grass mowed before the weekend.”
Then he nodded at Nadine. “And I have a lovely lady come into my shop and want to buy some flowers.” His smiled widened. “What more could I ask for today?”
Nadine blushed and lowered her eyes.
He waited a minute and then asked, “And what about you?”
She appeared confused, so he explained. “You glad you missed?”
Nadine didn’t respond. She stared at the floor, her shoes, the pieces of tiny leaves strewn near the counter.
She thought about the moment when she stepped out in front of the car, the ease with which she did it. The resignation and desire to be finished. The hole in her heart, the one that opened when her daughter died, the one that was still there.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Can’t say,” she answered. “Too soon.”
The old man nodded like he understood. “Yeah, it takes a while to decide,” he said. “Give yourself some time.”
Then he drew in a breath, tired from the depth of the talk they had shared.
He asked as cheerfully as he could, “Well, what kind of flowers are you thinking about today? You want daisies again?”
Nadine replied, “I think I want to buy a chrysanthemum, a yellow one, if you have it.”
“That I do,” he answered and walked to the room behind the counter. “I just got in some from the nursery last week. I’ve got yellow and this burgundy.” He brought in two plants, both full of blooms and healthy.
Nadine moved closer to the old man and touched the flowers. “How do you take care of these?” she asked.
“Well, these are perennials,” he answered, “which means, they should grow back next fall.” Then he placed them on the counter. “Some plants are good just for a season; some last for years and years.”
He realized he hadn’t really answered her question about maintenance. “You just need to make sure they have good light and get plenty of water.”
He spun them around and examined them. “They’re pretty strong plants, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.” Then he laughed. “Kind of like me and you, can’t kill them if you try.”
Nadine smiled at him.
“Where you planning to put it?�
� he asked, trying to help her in her gardening decisions.
“One on the grave,” she responded. “And I don’t know. Maybe I’ll take one home.”
“Then plant the one at your house.” He stuck his fingers in the pot. “You just dig a nice deep hole and place the entire base in the hole and cover it with dirt. Then water it good.” He pulled out his fingers, which were wet and dirty.
“The one for the grave should just be left in the pot. I don’t think they let you plant things out there.” He folded the foil around the top of the pots.
“Which, now that I think about it, it seems kind of odd, don’t you think?” He stopped. “I mean, you have to plant your loved ones there, right? Why not have some flowers to grow on top of them.”
Nadine agreed. She too had thought that such a policy was ironic and remembered saying so when she was told about it at the time she bought Brittany’s plot.
“So what color will you have?” He shook the dirt from his hands.
“Yellow,” she replied. “And I think I will take two.” She stood back. “Maybe I’ll plant one by my front porch.”
The old man nodded and returned the burgundy plant and brought out another yellow one. Then he held out his hand. “By the way, Walter’s my name,” he said.
“Nadine,” she answered. “Nadine Klenner.” She shook his hand.
“Well, Nadine Klenner, in honor of your release from the hospital and your failure at suicide, consider this a two-for-one special. And I’ll even throw in a few stems of your daughter’s favorite flower.”
He walked toward the large cooler around the corner and brought out five stems of daisies. Then he wrapped them in the green tissue paper. He rang up the charges and took Nadine’s money.
“Will you need some help carrying these to the car?”
Nadine shook her head as she stuck the cut flowers under her arm and picked up the two plants.
“It was very nice to meet you, Ms. Klenner,” he said as she walked to the door.
“You too, Walter,” she replied. Then she turned to him and asked, “Oh, by the way, how do I know if I’m doing the right thing for these flowers?”
He smiled. “You’re taking them with you, aren’t you? Giving them a space to grow?”
Then he added, “Though I certainly can’t say for sure, I expect that a choice of life, even if it seems like a small one, is always the right thing.”
Nadine said good-bye and then walked out of the little store and headed for the car.
When she got outside her mother met her and took one of the plants from her hands.
“I was getting worried about you.” She opened the front door on the passenger side.
Nadine placed the plant on the floor and the daisies on the seat. Then she opened the back door and got in. Her mother set the other mum down, closed both doors, and walked around to get in on the driver’s side.
“I was talking to Walter.” She reached her seat belt around herself. “He wants to die, too.”
Nadine’s mother gazed at her daughter in the rearview mirror, unsure of what she meant.
Nadine faced the road ahead even though she knew she wasn’t driving and didn’t need to watch. She thought about the man and all he had said. She thought about his wife and how it must have been for him when she died. She thought about keeping things like they were, leaving things as they were before somebody died, and wondered if that was the right way to live, the best way to go on with life.
She wasn’t sure if she should keep Brittany’s room like it was, locked up and untouched, or if she should pack up everything and move out. But then she thought again about Walter and the shop, and she realized that he hadn’t really done either of those things.
He had kept the store, but not kept it like it was. Nadine had noticed that there were new things in the shop, seasonal items for holidays, different kinds of plants, and fresh paint. He had not left everything as it was before she died. He had been willing to keep her place contemporary and up-to-date.
And yet, he had also not changed everything either: the coolers and the shelves appeared to be old, part of the original store. He had kept a lot of what had been there that his wife had designed and organized, but he had not left it only and exactly as it was.
Nadine thought about it and understood that Walter had managed a sort of middle-of-the-road grief. He had not decided on one extreme of enshrining his wife’s memory nor had he chosen the other extreme of wiping away everything she was. He had pulled them both together, somehow finding a way to honor the things she enjoyed and incorporating those things into his decision to survive. He had figured out that blending her life and loves into his life had helped him go on; that by continuing to love her, deepening, even, his love for her, he had discovered the answer he needed in knowing how to stay alive.
When they got to the cemetery, Nadine got out, taking one of the plants and the daisies, and walked to Brittany’s grave. Her mother stayed in her seat and did not even ask if she should go along. She decided that Nadine had planned to do this and needed to make this visit alone.
There were fresh flowers in the vase, and Nadine stuck the daisies in with the cornflowers and lattice her family had brought and then arranged them. She put the potted mum next to the vase and checked the soil to see if she needed to get it water. Since it was wet, she pushed it back against the headstone; and then she sat down on the grave.
“Hello, Button.” She smiled, remembering how Brittany liked that pet name.
“I’m sorry I’ve been away.” She thought about how many weeks she had not visited. She pulled at the grass around the grave.
“I guess if you’ve been allowed to watch, you’ve seen how crazy I’ve been.”
A flock of geese flew over her head on their way to the lake behind her, in the other section of the cemetery. They were loud in their flight, and she stopped to listen to them.
“I’m sorry, you know.” Nadine talked to the stone, the letters of her daughter’s name chiseled into granite. She reached up and traced the words.
“I was wrong not to buckle you in a car seat. I was wrong to leave you so much. I was wrong not to know how to save you. And I was wrong to pull you away from your daddy.” She stopped and took a breath. The clouds moved effortlessly across the sky, and she noticed a narrow line of color down at the fence on the edge of the property, a stream of pansies, planted and growing.
“And I’ve been wrong ever since. My feeble attempts to die have done nothing but brought shame to you and your memory.” She hesitated. “And if Charlotte is right, and you knew about this, then I’ve brought sadness into your new life. And I’m sorry for that too.”
Nadine turned around and leaned against the headstone. She lay on the grave of her daughter and peered out over the cemetery. She watched the birds settle on the lake, the leaves twirling off the branches and floating on the autumn breeze. She saw the countless other markers, each with its own flowers or balloons or flags, the even grass, and the smooth slope of earth. She thought about Walter and the things he had said, the way he had figured out for himself how to survive.
She thought about Brittany and the things she had loved, the things all little girls love, picnics and stuffed animals, wide open spaces and bright, sunlit days. She thought about her daughter’s heart and how she had always cared for other children who didn’t have as much as she had, how she would sneak into her room at Christmas and bag up a few of her new toys to give away when she heard about a fire or tragedy that meant someone wouldn’t have gifts.
Nadine realized that if she wanted to do as Walter had done with Georgette, keep Brittany alive by continuing to be involved in the things she enjoyed, then she would have to figure out how to open her own heart, learn how to love, purely and without complications.
“It would be easier to run a flower shop,” she said to the cool stone behind her. “Doling out roses is a whole lot less trouble than trying to grow the heart of a child.
“But,”
she said to the blue sky and the silent ground beneath her, the birds and the dancing gold and red leaves, “if I’m trying to stay alive, trying to keep my soul from dying, I guess there’s nothing better than learning how to grow some kind of love.”
She turned and looked down at her daughter’s name, the angel that was engraved at the top, the dates of birth and death, the final declaration of a person’s life.
Then she whispered, “I wonder if it only lasts a season or if it’ll come back next year.”
Then she remembered what the old woman on the psychiatric floor, Grandma, had said once when the nurse asked her why she was always going to church.
“I’m expecting to be with the redeemed when the seed of God’s love bursts open,” she had said. “But even if I’m walking through the fiery halls of hell, if I’m spreading the news of Jesus, I will not be overlooked.”
At the time Grandma had said it, Nadine had thought the old woman was speaking nonsense. But now in the fullness of the sun as she sat near the remains of her only child, it actually seemed to make sense. She thought she understood what the old woman had meant.
You keep looking for what you need to find. You can’t ever really be sure it’s going to be like you think it will be or even if you’ll recognize it when you see it. You can’t be sure what you plant today will grow next harvest. But that doesn’t matter, you just keep planting in hopes that something will one day show up.
Nadine pulled herself up from the ground, touched the flowers, the stone, and the earth that covered her daughter. The childless mother emerged from the grave, stronger and less afraid. And though she still stumbled, she knew one day she was bound to find her way.
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 10
Hope Springs Community Garden Club Newsletter
BEA’S BOTANICAL BITS
A Changing Garden
Sometimes our gardens can mirror our lives. We’ve grown old and boring, always planting the same things in the same places, expectant of the same blooms every year. Maybe it’s time to change things. Maybe this season is the time not just to divide the bulbs but to remove them completely and put them somewhere else.
