My best friend from high school, Gwyn, drove out here last week to bring some of my dad's furniture that she had been storing at her house for me. She also brought my dad's Christmas cactus.
Now, when I was growing up, Dad never exhibited a green thumb. In fact, because of his asthma and hay fever, he didn't even mow the lawn. I have a picture of me trying valiantly to use our push lawnmower when I was five, but it was actually one of my brothers who mowed the lawn regularly.
When Dad's mother died in 1977, he inherited, among other things, a very bedraggled Christmas cactus. He took it upon himself to nurse it back to health, perhaps as a metaphor for his own life that was, at that time, struggling on many fronts. With fierce determination, Dad resurrected that cactus into a huge, healthy, beautiful plant which he grew to love. I think he even named it.
When my friend brought it into our house last week, after dutifully caring for it these past two years, I was delighted to see a lone pinkish-reddish bud on its slender arms. The bud opened a few days after my friend left to return home, and was still open yesterday, the anniversary of my dad's last few hours on this earth. Then, this morning when I awoke, the flower had fallen from the plant and lay silently in the soil.
Shed no tear--O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more--O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
John Keats
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