text: Marnie opens the blinds and the sunshine is so dazzling that she has to shield her eyes. There hasn’t been much sun for months and as she looks outside she sees the ravages of winter in the garden. The lavender looks like it might not bounce back this year and there are no signs of the tulips yet. She wonders how many of them will make it as the squirrels were extra tenacious last fall. Still, there might be a few hardy ones that survived and Marnie says a little silent prayer for their welfare. It was Claire that had the natural flare for gardening; everything she touched seemed to flourish. Marnie learned to love digging around in their patch of earth but she never had the gift for it. Even as the gardening books that she had inherited from Claire stood on their shelves gathering dust, Marnie knew that Claire had never read them cover-to-cover. They were mostly there for inspiration especially in the winter months when the garden was just a thick blanket of white as far as the eye could see. But it was exactly what the eye couldn’t see that Claire had found so exhilarating. With the winter months stretching before them, the yard covered in snow and the garden a hard frozen place, she knew that this was where the crocuses slept in the deep, waiting for the first breath of spring. But now Marnie didn’t have that same exhilaration about the coming of spring. Without Claire the warmer months stretched before her like an endless fog of duty and obligation. The garden beds had to be cleared of leaves and debris and then maybe she might start to feel some kind of stirring but she wasn’t sure that she was feeling up to it. Even though she had finally hired someone to clear the snow from the driveway, a task she had usually tackled on her own, the winter had taken its toll on her. At first it was just little things, like forgetting why she had entered a room and then forgetting appointments even though they were tidily entered on her calendar. Now, she had to carry around a notebook that had all of the tasks for the day written down in sequence so that she wouldn’t get muddled, but even then she still had to make sure that she knew where the book was and then of course she had to actually look at it. She hates to complain, there is never any use in it, but she is starting to feel overwhelmed much of the time. It was the loneliness really that did it. When Claire had been there she would have reminded her of things: Have you turned the oven off? Did you put the wet clothes into the dryer? Have you taken your pills? But without Claire even these small tasks seemed to overwhelm her. Who cared if the wet clothes made it into the dryer today or tomorrow? As long as she didn’t burn the house down the oven could stay on all day and in the winter she welcomed its warmth. She didn’t really think her pills were doing much, but she tried to keep up with taking them anyway. It was almost as if she heard Claire’s voice. “Come on love, you’ve got to give them a chance don’t you? The doctor knows best, doesn’t he?” But the doctor didn’t know best in the end. At least not for Claire. Flowering shrubs had always been the centerpiece of the garden; Claire had made them her specialty. “Once they’re planted they will yield years and years of beautiful fragrance and colour. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.” And it was true that Marnie had a burst of joy every year when the lilacs bloomed and the whole house filled with their fragrance. And then came the mock orange and the flowering almond and there was one fragrant delight after another until their blooms faded and the more hardy summer plants burst into flame. But it was those shrubs that Claire loved the most. “They give both beauty and fragrance so they work twice as hard as the other plants in the garden.” Marnie can’t recall which of the shrubs flowered first and in fact she could barely remember which perennials they had in the beds but she knew that there were lots of them. “Perennials are something that gives us a little hope each year,” Claire had said. “Because even though they fade every year, they almost always come back for more.” Marnie is sorely missing Claire’s optimism but these days she is missing her in so many ways she can barely stand it. Some days she feels as if she is only half a person without Claire and when she thinks about that it actually makes her chuckle. “I’m not even half a person now with my faculties fading. Would that make me one quarter of a person I wonder?” Marnie reminisces about when they lived out in the countryside and the magnificent vegetable garden they had then. The garden had grown in long neat rows and in the fall Claire would set about preserving everything for the winter. The carrots would be yanked out of the earth, cleaned and laid into their cold sandy beds in the basement, hidden from the cat that sometimes mistook the basket for kitty litter. The potatoes would be uprooted from their little mounds, sorted and stored; tomatoes, sauced and canned; raspberries, frozen in yogurt containers and clear glass jars; peas and beans in layers in the freezer and the giant zucchini vine composting silently beside the Japanese maple tree that they had planted in the spring. There was such a sense of satisfaction then, as if the hard work of the summer was rewarded and there was comfort in the knowledge that they’d be well stocked with food for the winter months. “The garden is how I make it through the winter,” Claire had said. “A good vegetable soup will go a long way towards taking the chill out of old weary bones.” But now Marnie feels only her old weary bones and her brain that is even wearier than the rest of her body. She had thought about getting another cat for company. After Biscuit died they had been so heartbroken that they had never replaced him. Marnie remembers the damage a cat might do to Claire’s garden and now that she knows her days are also numbered it isn’t fair to take that on. Loneliness is the trophy of old age Marnie thinks. Few seek it out but too many are awarded it. She looks to the garden and almost catches a glimpse of Claire on her knees among the rosebushes. She is spreading a thick layer of dark rich manure with a trowel and she is alight with the joy of it. “There’s nothing that brings on the blooms like good old horseshit. It’s the nectar of the gods.” Although the bushes hadn’t even begun to bud, Marnie can almost see the full bright blooms of pink and then fast forwards to the fall when all the blooms are faded and gone and only the rosehips remain. She sees that nothing is meant to last forever. Not the blooms in the garden, not the blooms of youth and certainly not life itself. For a moment she is no longer lonely. She is only in silent awe as the rich fullness of it all permeates everything and a gentle spring rain begins to fall soaking deep into the roots of the apple tree coaxing it gently to blossom once again.