Garden of Angels

by Lurlene McDaniel

  He studied my face, then said, “Why would you let any guy ‘mess around’ with you? You’re worth more than that.”

  His question caught me off guard and I felt my cheeks growing warmer. “I—I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant,” he said. “But hear this. If we had started something, I couldn’t have stopped. I wouldn’t have wanted to stop. You know what I’m saying?”

  Of course I did. And the thought of it made my face hot, and I knew I was blushing full-tilt. Without pausing to think about it, I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him hard. His arms swept around me and pressed me closer. All the emotions that had held me captive for the past months—grief, longing, frustration, anger, fear—boiled up inside me. An explosion of desire shot through my body like a flash fire. I felt his hands moving on me, and everywhere he touched begged for more.

  Just as suddenly, I pushed him away. I took in great gulps of air. “Goodbye!” I cried. I ran for the house like a panicked rabbit. I ran because if I’d stayed, no promise in the world would have protected either of us from what would have happened next.

  My mother always said that bad things happen in threes. For me, I counted the death of my mother, followed by the loss of Jason, as two. I waited expectantly for the third. It came in late August, when the army notified Adel that, “while on a routine mission,” Barry had stepped on a land mine and blown off his left leg.

  Twenty-five

  November

  Adel was seven months pregnant in August, when Papa and I said goodbye to her at the Atlanta airport. She was set to fly back to Germany and the army hospital where Barry had been sent to heal.

  “You take care of yourself, little lady,” Papa said, kissing her tear-streaked cheek. “I can’t stand much more sadness. You hear?”

  “I’ll take care, Papa,” she said.

  I hugged her hard. “Tell Barry to get well quick.”

  We watched her fly away, feeling the loss of both Adel and the tiny person she carried inside her, beneath her heart.

  Adel called from Germany to tell us that Barry was doing well enough, and that he’d been overjoyed to see her. He had been on a mission in Cambodia, where land mines were sprinkled in the ground like bits of pepper. With one misstep, Barry had lost his leg and ended his career with the army.

  After that, Adel called weekly with updates of Barry’s progress. In the following months he advanced from a wheelchair to crutches and finally to a prosthetic leg and learned to walk all over again. He was released from the hospital and rehab, and two days later, Adel, almost twelve days overdue, went into labor.

  On November 11, 1975, Veterans Day, Joy Rebecca Quinlin Sorenson came into this world, weighing eight pounds and seven ounces, and with a full head of soft black hair. “She’s beautiful!” Barry said in the phone call he made to us.

  “You named her after Mama and me?” I asked, hardly believing what he had told me.

  “Adel says the names sound good together and that she hoped you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind. I love it!”

  “When will you get your discharge papers?” Papa asked.

  Barry answered, “We’ll be there for Thanksgiving.”

  They arrived two days before the holiday. My new niece was a wonder with a rosebud mouth and a plump little face. Barry looked thinner, but just as handsome. I couldn’t tell that his left leg was not flesh and blood until he pulled up his pant leg and showed me the beige plastic, jointed by metal links at the knee.

  “Looks real,” I said.

  “No it doesn’t,” he said. “I have phantom pains sometimes that make me think it’s my real leg, but it isn’t. I’m just glad to be alive.”

  Being a sophomore in good standing, I didn’t bother going to school on Wednesday. How could I sit in a classroom when Adel, Barry and the baby were at the house? Becky Sue dropped over to see the baby. She carried on about how pretty she was, then went on her way, for she had a new boyfriend and he was taking her over to meet his visiting grandparents.

  Adel and I whipped up a turkey and all the trimmings and our family sat down together on Thanksgiving Day to celebrate. I couldn’t keep my eyes off my mother’s empty chair. Had it only been a year since she’d first come home from the hospital? Since Adel and Barry got engaged? As Papa asked the blessing, I felt sorrow rise to my throat, longing for her in my heart.

  When I looked up, I saw Adel wiping her eyes with her napkin.

  Later, when we were sitting in the living room and Joy Rebecca was sleeping, I gave Adel the special gift I’d made for my niece. “It’s a scrapbook,” I said, setting the large album on her lap. “I got the idea from the one Kyle made about the war. This one’s happy.”

  I’d filled the pages with photos of our family. Of Mama and Papa on their wedding day, of Adel as a baby, of Adel’s school pictures, of me with Adel. “I thought she’d like to see that her mother was a princess,” I said when we came to the pages where Adel wore various pageant and homecoming crowns. “I left pages blank for you, Barry,” I explained. “For your baby pictures and growing-up pictures.”

  In the middle of the book, I’d drawn a family tree and written in all the names I knew, all the way back as far as I’d ever heard Mama say. Papa had helped me label his branches, and again, I’d left Barry’s branches bare for him to fill in.

  By now Adel was weeping and, for the first time in my memory, speechless. Then the baby started crying and Adel hurried from the room to nurse her. Barry smoothed his hand over the cover of the book. “You do nice work, Darcy. Thank you. We’ll treasure it always.”

  I went upstairs and into Adel and Barry’s room, where my sister was sitting in the old rocker Papa had dragged down from the attic. “The same one where your mother nursed you girls,” he had told us.

  I tiptoed over and watched the baby nursing. The baby sucked greedily, taking the nourishment that belonged to her by God’s design. I recalled all the times I had longed for larger breasts, then the times I didn’t want any because of Mama’s breast cancer. What had seemed useless and frightening to me months before now seemed perfect and necessary.

  “Your present is wonderful.” Adel’s voice was thick with unshed tears.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “I sure do miss Mama. I’d give almost anything to talk to her again.”

  “So would I.”

  “You were lucky to have been able to spend the time with her you did while I was stuck in Germany, before Barry left. I was lonely and had nothing to do over there.”

  “But you’re a mother now,” I said. “You have plenty to keep you busy.”

  “And this exempts me from wanting my mother?”

  “I guess not,” I mumbled.

  “I want to show her my baby. Why do you think I got pregnant so soon after getting married?”

  Feeling guilty because I had counted the months between her marriage and the baby’s due date like all the others in our town, I didn’t answer.

  “I knew Mama was dying. I wanted her to hold her first grandchild before she did.”

  I saw then that the hole in Adel’s heart was as big as mine, just a different shape.

  “Will we ever get over missing her?” I asked.

  “She told me once that she never got over missing her mother, so no, I don’t think we will.”

  By now, Joy Rebecca had fallen asleep. Adel shifted, tucked herself back into her clothing and held the baby up to me. “Hold her while I get her crib sheet out of the dryer and make up her bed.”

  I took the baby and Adel left. The room went whisper quiet. The rocker creaked. The baby’s milk-sated breath touched my cheek. There was a night-light on in the room, so the darkness had no edges, just soft smudges. I gazed down at Joy Rebecca, and in the baby’s tiny, perfect features, I saw my mother’s vanished face. And also my grandmother’s, and Great-grandmother Rebecca’s. I saw Papa too, and Barry, and all the people who had come before him, although I had never m
et them or even known them. Each generation stamps itself into the next one. The impression is indelible. Like the flowers in my mother’s gardens that come and go with the changing of the seasons, life re-creates itself. And the best of life must be nurtured if it is to thrive.

  “I’m going to tell you about your grandmother,” I whispered to the sleeping baby. “I’m going to tell you about all of your grandmothers because they are in you. They are you.” And I also promised that one day, I would take her into her grandmother’s gardens, where I would tell her the names of all the flowers . . . their Latin names, their common names, even their funny folk names, like love-in-a-mist and kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate.

  I would do it because she belonged to us. And because families endure. No matter what.

  You’ll want to read these inspiring novels by

  One Last Wish novels:

  Mourning Song • A Time to Die

  Mother, Help Me Live • Someone Dies, Someone Lives

  Sixteen and Dying • Let Him Live

  The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True

  Please Don’t Die • She Died Too Young

  All the Days of Her Life • A Season for Goodbye

  Reach for Tomorrow

  The Dawn Rochelle novels:

  I Want to Live

  So Much to Live For • No Time to Cry • To Live Again

  Other fiction by Lurlene McDaniel:

  Angels in Pink: Kathleen’s Story • The Time Capsule

  A Rose for Melinda • Telling Christina Goodbye

  How Do I Love Thee: Three Stories

  Angel of Mercy • Angel of Hope

  Starry, Starry Night: Three Holiday Stories

  The Girl Death Left Behind

  Angels Watching Over Me

  Lifted Up by Angels

  Until Angels Close My Eyes

  Till Death Do Us Part

  For Better, for Worse, Forever

  I’ll Be Seeing You • Saving Jessica

  Don’t Die, My Love

  Too Young To Die

  Goodbye Doesn’t Mean Forever

  Somewhere Between Life and Death

  Time to Let Go

  Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

  When Happily Ever After Ends

  Baby Alicia Is Dying

  From every ending

  comes a new beginning. . . .

  Epilogue

  Like water over stones, years have passed since that time when I first joined the sorority of motherless daughters. I am older, hopefully wiser, a whole lot less naive, a whole lot more comfortable with who I am.

  Much has changed in the world since those days in the seventies.

  A stunning granite memorial has been built in Washington, D.C., for the people who gave their lives for their country while serving in Vietnam.

  Women’s health issues are much more in the forefront of medicine. Breast cancer is talked about openly. Funds are committed to its eradication.

  Ronald McDonald Houses have been built near hospitals where families of patients can stay while their loved ones undergo long-term treatments.

  Hospice has become a far-reaching support system for the dying and for their families.

  Much has changed too for those I’ve known.

  My hometown, Conners, has grown into a city. Today over fourteen thousand people call it home, and with expressways and fast cars, it’s practically a suburb of Atlanta.

  My niece, Joy Rebecca, has grown into a lovely young woman. She earned a master’s degree in archaeology and has traveled to many exotic places, where she digs up and catalogs lives and civilizations from long ago. Mama would be so proud of her, just as I am.

  J. T. Rucker, the nemesis of my youth, eventually married Donna. They had three children and divorced. Donna moved away after that. J.T. never achieved those glory days of high school football again. He resides in Conners and owns a car wash.

  Papa never remarried. He lived alone in the old house until he had a stroke and Barry and Adel moved in with him. They renovated the kitchen and turned the back porch into two small bedrooms for their twin girls, born four years after Joy Rebecca. Papa died in 1989, sitting in a lawn chair looking out onto Mama’s gardens. Adel found him. She said that his Bible was open on his lap to Psalm Twenty-three, and that he looked as if he had just fallen asleep. The doctor said he had had a massive coronary and probably never felt a thing.

  Becky Sue married and moved away to California, where she and her family live. We connect with birthday and Christmas cards, e-mails and, occasionally, phone calls. She says she’s happy, but that it took “several years of intensive therapy to get my Southern mentality to adapt to the California lifestyle.” I’ve never known a better friend.

  Carole and Jim moved on to other churches. We exchanged Christmas cards for years. The saddest arrived in 1982. Carole wrote that Jason had been killed in a motorcycle accident. His cycle skidded on a patch of ice and hit a tree, and Jason was thrown off. He died at the scene. I cried buckets—not only because he was dead, but also because he was once so much a part of my heart. He was a misfit. A rogue. Carole said that he never found his place in life. Yet I never forgot him and that warm April day when he kissed me and I caught a glimpse of myself as a woman in waiting. Mama said that a girl never forgets her first kiss. And she was right.

  Adel hasn’t gotten to Paris yet. She and Barry live in Conners. Barry set up a small repair shop where he fixes electronic gadgets for the locals. When computers appeared on the American scene, Barry adapted, and today he runs the most successful business in Conners. I asked him once if he thought losing his leg had shortchanged his life, and he told me, “I regret not having a career with the military. As for the leg . . . well, I was serving my country, and for that I’ll always be proud.”

  His brother, Kyle, still suffers flashbacks of his war experiences. He has been in and out of VA hospitals for years, and all doubt that he will ever fully recover.

  Adel and Barry raised three wonderful daughters. Adel keeps Mama’s gardens beautifully, and every time I visit I tell her so. She’s added angel statuary in every bed, some of them large and Victorian, some small and as delicate as the wings of butterflies. Ours are still the finest gardens, for their size, in all of Georgia. In another of life’s ironies, Adel is president of the garden club. She knows more than anyone about growing things, how to keep and nurture them. Why, even the sulky roses thrive under her care.

  A few years back, Adel had a scare when a lump was discovered in her breast during a routine mammogram. I packed a bag and flew to her side and waited through the surgery, all the while praying for the news to be good. And it was good. The lump was only a cyst, easily drained. We rejoiced by going to Palm Beach to shop.

  And much has changed for me.

  I left Conners when I went off to college, and I never moved back. I graduated from medical school, married a fine man and am raising two sons. Today, my husband and I have a home in Appalachia, where I practice medicine and he writes books. I like the people in these hills, for they remind me of the ones I grew up with in Conners. And I fight fiercely for good medical care for them. My main soapbox is annual mammograms for every woman over forty-five. These breast X rays have saved the lives of thousands of women, because we have learned that when caught early and treated aggressively, breast cancer can be beaten.

  When I drive alone in the mountains, I often think back to that pivotal year of my mother’s illness and death from breast cancer. What a time it was! The loss of Mama, the specter of breast cancer that hovers over our family to this day, the war so far away, the pain, the happiness—all those things molded me into who I am today.

  I miss my mother and all the parts of my life I never got to share with her, and I look forward to the time we’ll meet again in heaven. I got over my anger at God for taking my mother when she was so young. Perhaps it’s my medical practice that has mellowed me toward him, for I have seen great miracles happen. Or perhaps it is just who I am. I cannot hold a g
rudge.

  Yet for all my medical training, I still marvel at the simplicity of the cycle of life, and of the complexity of the forces that drive it.

  Love of God, country, family—this is the great triad that supports and sustains great civilizations. And it is, as my mother always said, “the Southern gospel.”

  I embrace no other.

  Afterword

  Dear Reader,

  I am both a mother and a daughter. For me, becoming a mother ignited my understanding of my own mother’s choices, choices I often didn’t “get” while growing up. As a mother myself, I realized that mothers want to take care of their children, protect them, help them over life’s bumps. How devastating it would be to not be around to watch my kids grow up. And how devastating for a child to lose his mother prematurely and miss out on this kind of nurturing.

  For many years, I have wanted to write the story of a mother dying prematurely. Yet every time I started, I quit because my writer’s instincts kept telling me, “This isn’t working.” So I’d put the project aside and write about something else. Then two things happened that changed the way I thought about the novel.

  In October 1993, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was fortunate in that my cancer was caught in its earliest stages by a routine mammogram. I was a good candidate for breast-saving surgery, so only the lump and some surrounding tissue were removed. My surgery was followed by six weeks of radiation. I now go for annual checkups, and I’m happy to say that so far, I’m cancer-free. The support of family, friends and good doctors helped me through this difficult period.

  In September 1999, my beloved mother died. The loss I felt was enormous, more than I’d ever imagined possible. Again, family and friends were there for me. Out of these two experiences, the pain of losing my mother and the trauma of being diagnosed with cancer, the seeds of a story began to grow. I sat down and this time everything came together. I wrote the book you’ve just read.

  By setting the story in the mid-seventies, I was able to revisit a time that I lived through and am now able to see through different, adult eyes. I was also able to see just how far we’ve come in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. The Vietnam War is long over. The war against breast cancer continues. Medical science has a better arsenal to attack it. Twenty years ago, only six percent of tumors were caught. Today, more than twenty percent are caught before they advance and grow. Doctors are better equipped to locate and exterminate the “enemy” with advanced chemotherapy, “smart” drugs that bind to the cancer receptors at the cellular level and potent “seeds” of radiation that target only the tumor. But women still die. Daughters still lose their mothers. Mothers still lose their daughters. Today, research predicts that one in five women will get breast cancer.