He died in November. By the summer, Lucy is still finding messages he left for her. She wakes to find a climbing rose has reached her bedroom window, its tight buds unfurling. In the flowerbed, a white lily stretches over to the pink. It’s all fleeting beauty, beautifully fleetingly real.
PS Can you guess where I've been? This photograph is taken from one of the fantastic displays at RHS Chelsea Flower Show!
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When Feargal departed from this world, as one day he would, he wanted there to be something left behind. A stone with his name on. A pile of bones in a box under the ground. His body food for flowers growing over him. Like he'd never really left. Not completely.
Blushing Betty was once a young, tender stem tottering in the shadows. Then, someone turned the rain off and switched on the sun. She climbed upwards, became bright, proud and glossy. Her thorns hardened with experience but she could still blush on demand at the prospect of some rich fertiliser.
It wasn’t the petals that she kept. All that week they fell and she swept them into the kitchen bin with the toast crumbs. No, it was a single leaf that she slipped into her pocket, fondling its smooth surface, pressing her finger against its sharp tip. Just to remember.
Not a 50 word story, just an ordinary comment: lucky you going to Chelsea!! Despite keeping up my RHS membership I haven't been in years -sigh!
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