Plants

When I was in junior high school, I had a subscription to Seventeen magazine.  One issue featured stories that had been submitted by readers, and one of those stories has stuck in my mind over all these decades since.  It was told from the point of view of a girl whose mother had just died, and in the part I always remember, the girl's father finds her at the kitchen sink, angrily ripping house plants that have survived her mother out of their pots, and the father gently guides his daughter to put the plants back in their pots, replant them... what he says to her, however, I can't remember.

I think of that story, or what I can remember of it, now when I water the houseplants every week.  These plants are all still alive, and Jerry's dead.  How can this be?  Part of me does want to let them all die, rip them up, cut their branches off, throw them out of the house - the same feeling I get when one of those flies starts buzzing around me.  Why are you alive when he isn't?

Jerry loved plants.  He loved planting things, he had big plans for turning the yard from a not-very-attractive lawn into a sea of native grasses and other plants, and some of that he accomplished; he had equally big plans to start an indoor hydroponic window garden, which I heard about on NPR this winter and told him about - he was excited about the possibility of a less labor-intensive gardening project to do during recovery from chemotherapy, one that might have a better chance of success than the poor tomato and pepper plants he tried to shepherd through to harvest every year.  He had planted a first round of seeds for that project, and wasn't discouraged when those little tiny seedlings got dried out on the heating mat and died - he would just start another batch, he said.  He never got that chance.

The window boxes and hanging planters around the house have flowers in them that Jerry picked out at a local nursery a few days before he was hospitalized.  My parents planted them - Jerry didn't have the strength.

I should feel kindly towards all these plants, because Jerry loved them.  Instead, I'm angry with them - angry with plants, for however insane that sounds - because they're alive and he's dead.

Today was my last day as a cabinet finisher, after 11 years.  I stained and lacquered the crown moulding for the last job, which Steve the contractor came to pick up in the afternoon.  Probably not necessary to add that I did a lot a lot a lot of crying in the shop today.  Tomorrow I'll go in and get some things I haven't brought home yet - dishes, utensils we used for lunch, some of the tools from my bench, like the scraper ("scrapper," as Jerry called it) that Jerry would occasionally put a new edge on for me.

It's not just the end of Wood Bros. that's making me cry, I mean, in the general scheme of crying.  Last night I was trying to fall asleep, lying as is usual now on Jerry's side of the bed, which I do so I won't be lying on my side with no one on Jerry's side.  And I looked over at my side of the bed and wanted to be over there, but I wanted to be over there with Jerry on his side, where he belongs.  I don't know if it's becoming more real that he'll never be there again, but I'm beginning to feel what I think is panic - this horrific feeling, possibly of reality dawning more completely?  This feeling that something is really wrong now - this fear that Jerry might really be gone forever.

I don't know what I'm going to do if that's really true.