Blooming In Eternity

Blooming In Eternity
            Fear of my severely disabled younger son being left without at least one parent alive to care for him is so powerful that for most of his 28 years, my husband and I rarely drive in the same car together without him. The sudden loss of both parents would be the end of his world.
            If we want to share a meal for a special occasion, we might walk to a neighborhood café for lunch when he’s attending his day program, but even that is rare.
            Our special exception over the years was to visit my husband’s graduate school mentor and his wife. A generation older than us, they became beloved lifelong friends.
            Our older son and our old babysitter tag-teamed to keep a close eye on our younger son so we could cross the Bay Bridge and spend time with our friends in Orinda.
            Each summer we would dine outdoors in their garden, often visited by deer sauntering down the steep hill by their house. At the holidays, we sat after dinner exchanging small gifts, a special jar of jam, a tin of fancy tea, handy gardening gloves. One of our gifts to them each winter was to plant fresh daffodil bulbs in the pots on their patio, one of the few flowers that the deer would not eat.
            On each summer visit they would point to a section of the hill where they planted the previous year’s bulbs, so the hill would bloom with an ever-larger number of daffodils each year.
            A few years ago, the husband passed away, and we were devastated. It felt even more important to continue our visits to see the wife. Our older son moved away and our old babysitter had to care for her aging mother, so our care team that allowed us to visit our friend together was no longer there. We took turns.
            This week, we received a call that the wife had passed away. The visceral meaning of the word “bereft” reverberated in my heart.
            I remembered a book she gave me years ago, one that I was still waiting to read one day as a special treat. It was about an adventurous woman raised in a wild rural part of Australia who grew up to be a world traveler. Our friend said it reminded her of me. 
            My autistic son loves to move books to completely different bookshelves, rooms, and floors of the house. He moved that and countless other books to multiple locations among the hundreds of books in our house, and I no longer knew where it was.
            The night I heard of our friend’s passing I laid in bed thinking of our years of treasured visits together, an image of that book flashing through my mind. The next day, I was sorting through the cluttered maze that is our attic. I bent down to move some fallen items, and that lost book stared up at me from the floor. It was as if someone had placed it there for me to find among all of the scattered items I might have stumbled onto.
            Now I will finally read that book. Though I will miss seeing our friend to plant the fresh daffodil bulbs I had ready for her, I will imagine the hill above their garden in spring, ornamented by the daffodils whose number increased as our friendship grew deeper.
            May we all find comfort in cherished memories when we suffer great losses. Keep putting one foot forward.
            This week’s Hike Notes from the archives, Inspiration Point-Nimitz Way Hike, brings readers to an easy in-and-out hike along the paved Nimitz Trail with scenic reservoir and bay views from the hills of Orinda.
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This week’s hike from the archives:
Hike Notes 157: Inspiration Point-Nimitz Way Hike