The Careful Gardener

We knew it was coming. We expected it, but we thought we had twelve more hours. Dad died on a Saturday in the early evening. It was and it wasn't a surprise. He decided when he was ready to go.

He opened his watery blue eyes one last time, looked around a bit without focusing on anything. That's what probably gave us false hope. My mom, youngest sister, and I crowded around him, cheering for him to snap to it or something very unrealistic, all things considered. He closed his eyes tightly, and we begged fruitlessly for him to look at us once again, but in three or four more breaths, he was gone. He had probably been gone for the prior eighteen hours or maybe not.

Before he actually left us, though, I wondered where his consciousness was, what he was thinking, hearing, or seeing. The hospice people told us that Dad could hear us, which translated to our speaking really loudly, like he was deaf, or we spoke about inane things or necessities like going out for food or picking up prosecco for a toast to him while he could maybe hear us. I read something for the toast. It was short and unemotional because anything else would have meant sobbing, and if he could hear us, we didn't want him to hear a bunch of crying women.

My middle sister thought we had another twelve hours and went to her son's soccer game and left her cell phone in the car. It didn't seem right to leave her a voicemail. "Hi, Vi. Dad died. Call me back." I called my brother-in-law, and same thing. Voicemail. I called my aunt. Voicemail. I called the minister. Voicemail. I think Dad might have appreciated all the shouted "fucks" everytime I got a recording. I left a bunch of text messages. CALL ME ASAP.

The home health, hospice people, my youngest sister and I pitched in, got Dad cleaned up, and put him in sleep pants and a long-sleeved tee. Aside from being dead, he looked like a snappy (but pale) man taking a nap. Once everyone arrived, we toasted Dad once more to say farewell before the people from the funeral home took him away. This time, I filled my glass with whiskey. We said the Irish Blessing, cried some more, and then Dad was covered up, and a flag was spread over him. Then he was truly gone.

What I learned about preparing for someone's death is this: I'm very good at making the drug administration schedule something easy to follow, and I am also incredibly adept at collecting all the narcotics and controlled substances for destruction by the hospice nurse. I am very good at being task-oriented in a crisis. When I collected all the drugs the afternoon of the day before Dad died, I told him I had a party pack. He was just lucid enough to say he'd rather have a beer or a doughnut.

There's a business of death and a busy-ness. Both are good for diverting attention from the emptiness and the feelings of loss. Mom, my sisters, and I went through the motions and got through the first week. The following week, though, things slowed down, and Mom wasn't sleeping, and sleep was the key thing she needed. She was in a fog and a funk. She called on a Saturday at 4 a.m. "Dad's been gone two weeks." There was hitched breathing on the other end of the line. There's nothing anyone can say to make it easier because, when it's all said and done, Mom's partner of 60 years wasn't coming back. She's been up around 3 or 4 a.m. every day since.

In June, Mom and Dad bought a house to be closer to my middle sister and me. Dad didn't remember visiting the house. "Can you believe I bought I house I've never seen?" he said on Labor Day. He had seen the house, forgotten it, and was still excited about moving. He died two weeks later. He moved to the cemetery.

On one of Mom's early morning phone calls, she said, "I'm going to move. It's the right thing to do." She wasn't moving because she wanted to move. She felt that she finally needed to be closer to my middle sister and me. We had already sold the family home the previous year, and she and Dad had been in a rental condo since. Pushing them to move took a lot of convincing, and they did a lot of hemming and hawing because they were leaving the town they'd called home for the past 56 years. Eventually, though, Dad latched on to the idea that moving was a good thing. No more hand wringing. However, with Dad gone, there was the very real possibility Mom wouldn't want to move, but she was resigned: it was the right thing to do. The jury is still out on this one.

Also around the second week, my sister had gone to my parents' new house to mow the lawn. She sent me a photo of a plant, a volunteer, growing right in front of the house's bay window. "What is this plant?"

Dad was a biology major, but in 1960, biology was sub-divided into two flavors: botany and zoology. Dad chose botany. He grew flowers and vegetables, Concord grapes, and tart cherries. He tried his hand with apple, peach, and plum trees, but between the bugs and two of the trees not being very hardy, he gave up the fruit trees. He grew sunflowers. They climbed to twelve to fifteen feet. He put stakes in the ground to support their height and top heavy blooms. Eventually, they'd lean, and he would cut them. Mom would photograph Dad with his sunflowers. The heads were usually between 12 and 20 inches in diameter. Every year he raised his sunflowers, and we accumulated a series of photos of Dad smiling with his giant sunflowers.

Dad also grew tomatoes. He didn't like the peels on the tomatoes, and Mom peeled them every summer, cut them into wedges, and put them on a plate for most meal times. "There's no contest between hothouse tomatoes and homegrown tomatoes," he'd say. For a long time, he grew Beefsteak tomatoes, but he found he preferred Jetstar in his later years. He was right. There is no contest. Homegrown tomatoes eclipse hothouse.

Back to the text and the photo from my sister: What is this plant?

I had a suspicion. The leaves and stem were familiar, but I confirmed with a reverse image search. Helianthus. Sunflower. Sunflowers aren't typically germinating in the mid-west in September. During the third week after Dad's passing, the sunflower bloomed. Three flowers. "One for each of his girls," Mom said.

On the fourth week, Mom, my sister and I were visiting the new house to look at the landscape and have the flower beds prepped before the first frost. We were in front of the house, where the sunflowers were still in full bloom, and Vi pointed to something poking through the geraniums. "Is this a weed?"

"It looks like a tomato plant," I said. "Out of season."

I did a reverse image search, and it was a tomato plant.

I believe in signs. I don't look for meaning where there is none, but I do believe in signs. My mother, sister, and I took in the three sunflowers standing small but proud in front of the house Dad wouldn't get to live in, and October's volunteer tomato plant. "It's a sign. I think Dad wants you to move," I said. "I think he's telling us something."

Mom said, "I think you're right."