Where Lilacs Still Bloom (30 page)

T
hey say that life is like a river or the garden, both images to remind us all of seasons, cycles, the rise and fall of living.

Nelia ran from the postal box to the backyard. With Lizzie and Delia and their families on their own, she’d come home to us. She squealed now, “I’ve been accepted!” I stood with my hoe, pushed my hat back. “Swedish Hospital says they’ll take me!”

“Did you doubt?”

Nelia stepped around matted grasses still wet from the spring floods to hand over the letter. She’d graduate in just a few weeks and be gone from this place that had nurtured her through the years. The garden had weathered the spring Lewis River flood, but it had taken lots of hard work, digging and potting dozens of plants that I didn’t think could make
it otherwise. Now, with drier soil, she’d soon be working side by side with us. But first, we’d have to celebrate.

“Congratulations, Nelia,” Martha said. “We all knew this would happen.”

“Did you? I wasn’t certain.”

Fritz laughed. “I’ve never known you not to be certain. You’re like Ma, here, in that.”

Nelia grinned. “A nurse,” I said. “We’ll have a nurse in the family.”

Fritz frowned at that, and I took it as a subtle statement that he didn’t consider Nelia as a part of the Klager family.

“I guess all that nursing at school has paid off,” Martha said.

“Nursing at school?” Nelia looked surprised.

“All the times we teachers call on you when there’s a cut or sprained ankle and the child is crying and distressed. I call that nursing, and we always think of you.”

“I guess it is. When I get to go with them to Dr. Hoffman’s office, that feels like real nursing. Sometimes I even get to hand him needles and thread, for sewing stitches. I think I could even do it myself.”

One of the tabby cats swished his tail against Nelia’s legs, then plopped down next to Bobby.

“You’ll be leaving us,” I said. “But we’ll get good work out of you before you go. Now scat. Get those clothes changed and head back out here. We have a dozen things to do before the next Lilac Day.”

It was what they’d started to call the spring event when people came to Woodland to see the blooms close to Mother’s Day. This year, 1912, there was no article by Miss Givens, but people would come anyway.
Woman’s Home Companion
had run a short piece last year about the garden. But because the article had pictures included, I thought we might have ourselves a crowd.

Nelia skipped back upstairs. Both Martha and Tillie, who had once worked for Dr. Hoffman as a nurse, had written letters for Nelia, and so had Dr. Hoffman himself. All of Woodland in a way had played a part in the success of Nelia’s future. In Ruth’s too. That girl would graduate from the Peabody Institute, and Frank and I planned a trip to Baltimore. Martha would go with us while Fritz stayed and watched the farm, looked after Bobby, the cats, and the cows.

Cornelia planned to join us and visit Snyder gardens and a few others back east. I wished Nelia could come, but she’d be off to Seattle, anxious to get her scholarship details into place. After supper, Martha complained a little of a headache and said, “I believe I’ll go upstairs and lie down.” That’s what she said, just like that. She held her head, and I asked if she wanted a hot water bottle or something, and she said no, that she just needed to rest.

In the morning, she was late coming down to breakfast, and I shouted up the stairs. I hadn’t heard any stirring from her room, and Nelia was already dressed and off to take her acceptance letter to show her father.

“Ja,” I said. “He’ll be happy as a tailor with a new batch of cloth.”

I did wonder if Nelia’s father might object to having her go so far away, but then I’d recalled a similar pondering about Ruth’s father letting her move to Baltimore and how that worry had been wasted; he’d been pleased she could pursue her music interests.

Nelia left, and I called up again and said to Martha, “Don’t piddle around now, come have breakfast, and we can talk awhile before we face those flowers.” I turned a few pages of a catalog, looking at the exotic ornamentals calling to me for next year, when I heard the clock chime and realized Martha had still not come downstairs.

“What’s with you?” I walked up the stairs. She wasn’t usually a hard sleeper, though with her twenty-six, we didn’t talk much about her sleeping habits. I knocked on her door, and when there was no cheerful, “Come in,” I pushed it open.

“Martha,” I said. She lay with her face turned away on the bed, and I touched her shoulder gently. “Do you still have a headache?”

Her body felt cool. And still. Deathly still. I shook her, but there was no movement.

“Mein Gott im Himmel,” I said. “My God in heaven, keep her safe,” I whispered, then loudly went to the window and shouted for Frank. “Frank! Come, at once! It’s Martha!” My voice broke speaking her name, and I felt the tears well up.

Martha’s body lay before us in an open casket. Frank sat bowed over on a low chair, his hands clasped between his knees, their grip broken only when he reached to wipe his eyes with his forearm. Delia shushed Irvina, who asked, “Why won’t Auntie Martha get up?”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” people said as they spoke to us in hushed tones. Such simple words, meant to be kind, sympathetic, and yet they couldn’t begin to breach the pain. Martha’s death sliced through me like a pruning knife: sharp, leaving a clean cut open and exposed to all the elements. What was the word Nelia used?
Incarn
, the growing of new flesh over a wound. It would take a very long time for that to happen. New words, that was Martha’s talent, teaching us words.

“Let’s go outside. Take a short walk,” Nelia said. Martha had been in the parlor for more than a day now, first taken from her bedroom to the undertaker, then returned in the casket.

“No, no. I have to stay with Martha. I have to. If I’d gone up to check on her, maybe I could have saved her. Called Dr. Hoffman. I might have.”

“No, you couldn’t have,” Nelia said. “Dr. Hoffman said it was likely an aneurism or maybe a brain tumor, but nothing he could have done anything about, or you either.”

“She worked too hard in the garden. I worked her too
hard. She said she had a headache. I should have told her to lie down sooner.” No last good-byes like Lizzie had with her Fred. More like Delia’s not being able to tell Nell Irving her last thoughts nor his to her. He left this earth without his knowing how much he was loved. Martha wouldn’t know that either.

“Mama.” Delia covered my hand with her own. “You have to believe that her death wasn’t anyone’s fault. No one’s. Seeking blame, even blaming yourself, robs you of strength you need. To carry on. To do what Martha would want you to do.”

“What’s that? Worry over my lilacs? What are lilacs compared to a daughter?” I so hoped Martha knew that, but had I ever told her? Were these bad things happening to my children because I wasn’t a listening mother, learning from the tragedies befalling us?

Dr. Hoffman patted my shoulder. I looked up at him and spoke aloud my questions. “No,” he said. “No. Bad things happen, and we learn from them, but they do not happen so that we will learn. God is a good God. Martha’s death is not a consequence of anything you did or did not do. It’s what is.”

Yet I looked for something or someone to blame, though I knew it would keep me grieving her life with guilt rather than remembering it with gratitude.

Nelia said, “Remember, you told me that Martha said we should give our sorrow words.”

“I … I can’t find the words.”

“Scripture, Mama,” Lizzie said. “We’ll find comfort there.” Lizzie picked up the family Bible and read passages from Isaiah and Jeremiah about God as comforter and the planner of our lives, “plans for good.” I said the phrases over and over in my mind.
Plans not to harm but to give a future and a hope
. Martha’s students and their families came and sat for a time. Lizzie played softly on the piano. It seemed to me that the music comforted Lizzie as words couldn’t. I lost track of time, and then Lizzie brought in rose of Sharon. “It’s a healing balm, Mama. You said so yourself.”

“Look what blooms on this April day,” said Nelia. “Martha liked this flower, didn’t she? Would you like me to put it next to the casket?”

“No, I’ll put the flowers in her hands. It’s how I wish to remember her.”

Nelia walked with me to the casket, where Fritz stood. I pulled the flowers one at a time from the vase and nestled them into Martha’s still hands, then patted them as my lips trembled. I gasped getting my breath. Frank slipped in between Fritz and me and took me in his arms. We held each other, lost together, parents outliving their child. The deepest of hurts.

W
e did not go to Baltimore. Instead, we sent a letter to the Snyders telling them of Martha’s passing and that we must stay here. I had looked forward to visiting the conservatories of the East, walking through Arnold Arboretum at Harvard and a new site Cornelia had been invited to in Locust Valley, New York, called Munnysunk. Munnysunk was a private tree arboretum bought by a man with wealth, it was said, but who felt empty. Until he began to plant and protect rare trees, and that had filled him up. I loved trees almost as much as lilacs and other ornamentals, but mostly I liked the idea of meeting someone who cared deeply about plants and wasn’t puffed up about himself. Certainly a man who named his farm Munnysunk would have a sense of humor. But it would have to wait. We weren’t entitled to joy with Martha’s death.

“I wish you’d go with me.” Cornelia had taken the train from Sacramento as soon as she got my letter telling her of Martha’s death. “It would cheer you. We could go after the lilacs stop blooming; there’d still be plenty to see.”

“No. Lilacs in bloom are what we wanted to see, and now that’s gone. They’re gone. Or almost. But you should go. Hear Ruth play, and tell her we are so sorry to have missed it. I’m so pleased she made contact with the Snyders. She gave them a start from the lilac we sent her off with, so now they have more than one Klager variety in their garden.”

Cornelia nodded. “I believe Ruth has been of help to them. Or at least to Bill’s mother.”

We spoke of these things while I showed Cornelia around the garden, pointing out new bushes, brighter colors, and shaded hues that I liked and would crossbreed for. She told me that the Snyders were thinking of selling and moving to Massachusetts. Mr. Snyder had been offered a teaching position at Harvard, and Shelly thought she could find purpose in volunteering at Arnold Arboretum, which the university maintained and used for study. In between the conversations about families and life, we’d stop and discuss a bloom, or I’d tell her a story about the plant or its planting. Martha’s name often came into it, and when it did, I ached inside, a weight like rocks settling on my heart and threatening to crush. Sometimes it was hard for me to breathe, I missed her so. The previous sons-in-law had been close to that age at their deaths
too. I feared for Fritz, for Ruth, for Nelia, my nieces and nephews, and wondered why Frank and I had been left to live past our youth.

“So unless you come now, you won’t get to see the Snyder garden,” Cornelia said.

“What? I’m sorry. My mind wanders of late.”

“If the Snyders move, you’ll miss their estate. What about next year? Should we try for a Luther Burbank visit? I could check his schedule. That wouldn’t be such a long trip.”

I shook my head. I had no interest in leaving my garden except to put blooms on Martha’s grave.