Tuesday, June 18, 2013

good-bye sweet garden memory

Janet's lush and wild garden
June 16, 2013

The papers were signed yesterday. It's time to say good-bye. I will miss this piece of land with an ache in my heart, even though I first laid eyes on it only 7 years ago. Perhaps my ache is more for the fiercely independent woman who has lived and breathed and sweated and loved and found solace here for 39 years. There will come a time when she will not remember, but for those whose lives she has touched, we will collectively remember for her.

We were expecting this for a while, yet we had no idea how it would actualize. A springtime attempt to keep an insistent robin from attacking himself against the dining room window led to a hurtful of cracked ribs. Then came the trickling and disturbing discovery from the medics, the doctors, the friends, and the neighbors that 911 calls and hospital visits had become a weekly occurrence. Did she not tell us out of concern that we would worry and fret over her, or did she simply not remember? The decision to move came before she was ready, and she was excruciatingly angry at us. The surprisingly wonderful part about memory loss is that she quickly forgot she was mad. And so it goes...