Letter: In Cahoots in Heaven

I’ll be the first to admit I do not know the names of flowers.  I just find them so beautiful.

So did my wife, and so did our mom.

Nothing – other than watching their children and grandchildren grow and blossom – made them happier than being down on their knees, using a small spade to turn over the dirt, planting bulbs, anticipating spring.

It was the first day of this past spring that my wife left the beauty of this earth for the beauty of heaven following her long, long battle with cancer.

And now I am captivated by the beauty of the blossoms that even that day were announcing – with the soon opening and unfolding of their petals – her departing gift to me.

Both my wife and our mom were born in the spring.  Maybe that explains their love of flowers.

It was in the spring following our mother’s passing that our dad thought it best to mow down mom’s neglected flower bed.  And, for that matter, he’d take down the old golden plum tree too that hadn’t produced for years.

My sister begged him to wait.

That month of May, my sister writes, “every bulb mother planted since the beginning of time was in full bloom.  The border garden was a riot of color.  And the gnarled old plumb tree?  There were so many plums that year we put out signs begging people to take as much as they wanted.”

Are my wife and our mom even now in cahoots in heaven? 

Certainly, this is true.  They displayed no greater joy; they believed time was no better spent; they were captivated in no other way than by the spring performance every year of the flowers on the stage that was their garden.

And, somehow, tending to these treasures they left behind, we realize we are not cultivating alone.