The journey of decades always comes back to this little garden.  Three sons, they grow, move out, the grandkids…and each year, around this time, the Spring fully commits and he can venture out, sniff the air, and get his hands in the dirt.

The sun was setting each day slightly further to the right, until it reached the gray steeple, and sure enough the first snowdrops emerged.

The soil is still slightly cold. The interconnected roots welcome him back, sense his health, loop him in. 

He is part of the Spring.  Part of this angle of sun and length of day.  Generations of local birds have flown and hopped around him.

His wife watches from time to time, standing in the window…

Even she doesn’t know that, for a select few, soil can nourish the body, undo things like neuropathy, turn back time.

Kneeling on the ground, his neck growing red, he is the membrane between Spring and soil.  The sun, the water, the upward growth, pass through him.

The garden is renewed in a pulse of light.

And now for months it will be:  Dad’s outside.  Grandpa’s with his flowers.  Can you smell the flowers on Grandpa?

*

Lucky man, to live in the smell of hyacinth and woodbine.  To have grass-stained knees again.  But there’s more.  The garden extends:

Six months ago, the seed catalogues started arriving.  In March, he took virtual classes and surfed the chatrooms.  Then it was regular visits to the nursery—that goldmine.

Now, like clockwork, his schedule’s changing, and so is his wife’s.

“I don’t feel like TV.  Let’s sit outside.”

“It’s warm enough.  Let’s eat outside.”

To be near the garden.

This bone reached the end of its life before the rest of me.  And everything around it in the dark interior was aware; they’d seen the cartilage slowly crushed out of existence, the nerves caught between bones, the rim of the pelvis distorting.  They felt, before I did, my body lurching.

And for years they tried to help.

Now everyone can go back to normal.  And start to welcome the titanium stranger.

Hipbone, older than my own mind!  You formed with me in the womb.  There was a time, around week 25, when you were near my mouth.  We were swirled in there, and I was curled to you.

We came out into the bright world together.  The antibodies in your marrow kept me safe.  You took a pounding when I was a goalie diving.  I blame you for my lack of dancing ability.  And it was you who whispered the right words to me when I knelt to propose.

There was always a connection between the flick of my eyes scanning and the marrow flowing; between the marrow flowing and my saliva forming.

It was sad when you wore down.  The team immediately felt it, and I, the greater good, felt it, became limited.  It was poignant to know that genetic destiny rotted you from within, that inner weather had carved you, beautiful but paper-thin.

Yesterday, we sat by a calm pond.  For a while I took you on my lap.  We watched two Canadian geese glide through thick silver water.  Sun on the bare trees, the reeds.  I know you don’t want to leave.  I’m sorry.  But I can’t put you before me anymore.  I can’t sacrifice my knee, all the way on the other side of my body!  I have to protect my lower back, from itself.  They would all keep carrying you, till they gave out too.

Remember that pond, and the brook flowing out of it.  Just like that you’ll flow away.  Rest, don’t try to make the medical waste walk.  Just rest with all the loyal servants.  And realize: new thing, you are intact!  Meanwhile, the greater good lives on, the greater good walks on, faster and painlessly!

Who was that person?  What did it feel like to be him?  This I can’t say.

I can only give the perspective of the 4-year-old boy he held in his arms, and danced around to ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’.

There was death to come for him much later, and trauma for me in the next few years, trauma he softened by making me bacon and eggs, by hitting fly balls so I had to run and dive.

In this world, he sat in the diner, in a black mesh tank top and teal sweatpants, eating a toasted bran muffin with butter.

In the upper worlds, he fills a doorway with warmth and light, warmth and light pouring out.

You are what’s kept me going.  You are every positive word that comes out of my mouth.

The richness in this world–I saw it first on the top of your dresser:  brewer’s yeast, bee pollen pellets, fascinating rubbery vitamin E, iron, garlic…

You’re getting dressed in the late afternoon, to go into New York to the Academy, sweating a bit in your dress shirt.

Now you’re deep into Alzheimer’s, all your diplomas in a box.  I’m playing with your beautiful white hair.  Even then, with your barrel chest, you give me a bear hug.

Do you need anything now?  I doubt it.  But let me give anyway.  May all those hugs, and all those times I played with your hair, reach you in the upper worlds, a thousand times amplified.   So within God’s embrace, for a second, you smile a different smile.

The grass grows very green and thick; it pours from your grave.  Not surprising at all.