I should have been grateful, but I wasn't. It seemed each time I returned home there was another "package" at my front door from my mother-in-law. It was springtime, and she was thinning her perennials. I had told her I wanted her extra plants to fill a new flowerbed I'd prepared the preceding fall, and she was graciously complying.
First she brought hostas, cool and green, their roots enveloped in a clump of earth and cradled in newspaper. Another day, I received bright red poppies and then lavender phlox, followed by purple irises and other plants.
Exhausted after each long day, I, nevertheless, grudgingly planted the flowers and tended them. Playing in the dirt is usually one of my favorite warm weather past times, but this year my heart wasn't in it. For what I couldn't have foreseen when I asked for the plants was that when it was spring and the world was coming to life again after a long Minnesota winter, my own mother would in a hospice room at the hospital about to lose her battle with cancer.
She passed away in June, and for many days, I simply went through the motions, cooking meals, doing laundry and watering the plants in my yard, among other household chores.
To my surprise, the plants flourished, filling the flower bed with color and life. Weeding and watering soon became a time of wonder. How could something I had done while in the depths of despair now bring such beauty and even a sense of happiness to my wounded soul?
And, although my gratitude was a little belated, I came to appreciate the little gifts my mother-in-law had brought to me each of those days.
Today the flower bed is a gentle reminder of my mother. I still feel close to her there. I placed a stepping stone among the flowers in her honor which reads: "Gone yet not forgotten, although we are apart, your spirit lives within me forever in my heart."