30 years ago a woman planted bulbs around our house. The Magic House we call it; it has a great view and a calmness that heals you. The bulbs grew these tall pink flowers and long green leaves that overflowed out of the middle. I have no idea what they are. A lily maybe? I suppose I could look it up but it wouldn’t change the story. They lived here a while and then we moved in. In a year we will have lived here as long as she did. At some point, she still had a bunch of bulbs left and one day she dug a hole and put all she had left into it. They would start there and live there rather than die in a box. Every year or so she would dig one up and plant it somewhere and she told us we should dig 'em all up and finish planting them around the house. We replanted a few but honestly we sort of forgot that part of the story after a while. Every year the long green leaves would grow out and all of a sudden, near my birthday, they would bloom all around the house. Of course, we always got a good bunch under the eucalyptus tree from the pile of bulbs that were buried there.
About 5 years ago they just stopped. First the ones under the front window, then the rest, and after one last gasp, the glory hole of pink bells seemed to have dried up.
Until about 3 weeks ago... I was out working on the deck by the big eucalyptus and one day, out of the blue, there was a sprout and then, one day, a single, lovely pink bell atop 16 inches of stalk. The beautiful, bright color contrast against the fallen leaves; a big bell that the hummingbirds just love. No long green leaves, just a single, open full-bloom flower after 30 years in the ground and 5 years since the last one.
I got the call today. She is no longer with us… she passed about three weeks ago… while I was out working on the deck. Under her trees, looking at her lake, from the home she raised her children in. It was the house where she celebrated birthdays and anniversaries and graduations, Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas trees, and a bunch of Sundays fishing for dinner. Their house, their home, and for the last 24 years it has been our house, our home. However, they rebuilt it after it burned, she and Uncle Bob, nail by nail. They are a part of it. Believe what you will. I fully believe she came home and is resting now out of pain and just enjoying the view… sitting next to Uncle Bob with a highball and a Pall Mall with lots of big pink flowers under the eucalyptus tree.
She would not want her name mentioned and she would scoff at the story. "That’s just silly, Dan."
