I was typing an email to my dearest friend and decided to also share this latest ADC with the board:
We recently moved in a new place with a nice patio outback. It has a couple of banana trees around it and an orange tree. (I am still not over the shock of being a lifelong Virginia girl, sans living in KY for college and NYC for a brief time, now living in Texas, having a banana tree and a palm tree in my backyard. )
I was remarking to my fiancee that I would like to buy some outside plants because they remind me of my grandmother. I was very close to her. She was like a best friend. She fell ill in Fall of 2012 and never recovered, my boyfriend that died in June 2012 , but prior to his death we spent many days with her at her home among her flowers. It was so special to me that my boyfriend loved her and she loved him.
I like to think of them together reminiscing in Heaven about the magical Spring 0f 2012 when my boyfriend and I rekindled a high school romance. We had not been together in 10-years and it was simply a blissful happy time. It was so warm almost like summer in Virginia that Spring when usually we have rather cold Springs.
Losing my grandma mentally and my boyfriend to suicide in 2012, so close together, after spending nearly ever day from February to June with them was especially hard for me. They were two of my favorite people on the planet and then just gone. My grandma's body finally perished in October of 2014.
I was her sole caretaker until she fell and broke her hip and could no longer walk. I was not physically strong enough to lift her to bath her by hand or change her diapers. I had no help from our other family. If she had not fallen and could have still walked to the restroom, I'd probably still be taking care of her today. I loved her dearly.
Still, it was more like a shell of her former self as her mind never returned to its pre-2012 state and even while she was still alive I grieved for the woman and best friend she had once been.) Caring for her gave me a reason to get out of bed after my boyfriend's unexpected and tragic suicide in June of 2012. I was 28 years old and having to make weighty decisions about her care with no input from her two daughters and son (my dad.)
I did the very best I knew how at the time to cope with it. Luckily I was doing freelance technical writing at the time and was not confined to a 9 to 5 job. Still, being someone's caretake full-time is exhausting and trying, but it was also one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in my entire life.
(My grandmother, like me, loved all forms of life: flowers, birds, bees, humming birds, squirrels, animals, people. I inherited my love for plants and philosophy of loving without judging from her. )
Back to the present moment 2017, two days later, after I remarked to my fiancee that I'd like a flower or two out on the patio because outdoor flowers remind me of my grandma, a random cracked plastic pot of neglected weeds that we had meant to toss, when we cleaned out our new backyard, bloomed into this beautiful flower. I have researched it and learned it is an Amaryllis!
I have pictures if anyone would like to see. I snapped one close up at the base of the neglected pot. It looks like nothing but overgrown weeds. From the look of the pot, it has been out there for some time! I had no clue what a beautiful plant was stirring inside it. |
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