A Time to Garden

It is eight o’clock and the sun is still shrouded by the clouds. A good time to garden. She gets out of bed and goes to the room where she keeps her gardening tools. She takes her shears and a small shovel. The watering can is outside, forgotten the last time she gardened. She taps her lips with her index finger, walks around, trying to guess what she's missing. Ha-ha. It's her gardening gloves, hanging on a nail drilled into the blue wall. She moves closer to take it but her hand stills before she could touch them. She wants to feel the soil sifting through her fingers. At least for one last time.

Turning her back to the gloves, she looks at herself in the mirror on the opposite wall. He always told her that one should look his best at all times. She runs her fingers through the crew cut on her head. He liked it longer. But this is the sign of three months of freedom from chemotherapy. 

The doctor said there was no use in continuing, the cancer has invaded her system. Like the darkness within her. Or maybe cancer is the darkness. But she can't wait for it to grow longer. Lying down and staring at the flowery patterns he painted on the ceiling of the bedroom, it seems death might come before her hair reaches her shoulders. She sighs and carries her tools to the garden; The garden is rectangle-shaped, demarcated by white stones, filled with dark brown loamy soil and his ashes. She drops the tools and bends down. 

“Hello, Jacob”, she says, dipping her fingers into the soil. She hopes it's his cheeks she is touching. The soil is cold and soft. The loam cleaves onto her fingers as if to recall the memories it has of them. 

As if to say, “I’ve missed you, Sarah.”