Overgrown

Brenda and Joel Edwards were adorable in the way that aging couples in love are. When they met, they were both in the prime of their youth, and they had held hands on the stage as they were crowned king and queen of the prom. That night was magic, even though it was in the school gym and smelled faintly of sweat and old rubber and the strobe lights gave Brenda a headache. That magic was still there, between them, after all the years, and even when their hair faded to grey then white and their waistlines extended and their skin sagged, there was nothing more beautiful to them in the world than each other. After all, what were smile lines but the memories of millions of happy times? And what was a couple extra pounds but testament to a table that was seldom empty?

Brenda’s garden was something of magic as well. She spent hours there each day, for years and years, planting flowers and ivy and weeding and watering. Important things happened there. Her children’s communion parties, confirmations, and even weddings were all witnessed by the colorful jungle in her yard. It was breathtaking, no matter the weather or season.

In the spring the flowers shouted through the brisk air with bold colors. The chartreuse stems they resided on swayed in the breeze and the effect was an explosion of brightness and beauty. When it rained, everything was covered in glass. Leaves dipped with the weight of the droplets and danced up and down, up and down to the song of the showers. The great pear tree erupted into blinding white blossoms, a strange but very welcome echo of winter snow, and the petals drifted everywhere and permeated the air with fragrant wafts.

Summer meant leaves as green as emeralds and the beginnings of fruit growing on the pear tree, the fig tree, and the twirling grapevines that entwined on top of the wooden swings. It brought in the black-eyed susans with their golden-coin petals and the honeysuckle blossoms with their heavy scent and rosé-colored fingers. Summer sunsets, too--the wine-soaked, pink-clouded, hot ones--touched over the Edwards’ backyard. The amber rays filtered through all the leaves on the floor, drenching everything in otherworldly beauty, and making a mosaic of light on the floor that moved with the breeze.

Fall was a fire of deep reds, flaming oranges, and bright yellows, all raining down and drifting everywhere. The fruits were ripe, finally, and many a picnic was held beneath the warm-toned leaves where everyone bundled in sweaters and blankets and snacked on figs, candy-sweet pears, and bunches of grapes. When the sun got tired for the day, the light was pure gold as it spread its wings.

In winter the trees shed their leaves and dripped diamonds, and snowflakes covered the phantom branches in blossoms of stardust. When dawn came it shone through all the icicles and covered everything in blinding white light. The skeletons of the vines and bushes grew again with ice, and everything was alive again even if it was only an illusion.

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Joel’s grave was adorned with clippings from the garden, when he finally passed. He was in his nineties, by then, and Brenda was never the same after. Well, she wasn’t the same for a long time, actually. It started before he died. First with small things: she forgot to pick up eggs when she went to the grocery store, thought she heard music when nothing was rotating on the record player. Then she forgot birthdays, names, and memories. Her thoughts ran away too quickly for her to grasp more often than not, leaving behind traits of sadness and hazy colors in their wake. Everyone in her family had long accepted that she was losing it a bit. Still, every morning, without fail, she got up out of bed and stretched her arthritic joints, had a cup of coffee and perhaps a pear (if it was fall), and spent hours tending to her garden. Standing for too long left burning aches in her back and legs, and her hands were so mangled by age that it was hard for her to grasp the watering can, but she refused to abandon what she had spent so long growing.

Time destroys everything eventually, regardless of how determined we are to stand against it; its coarse grains have no mercy, and the Edwards’ house was no exception. Eventually Brenda couldn’t see all the weeds. There were a couple days, even, where she had gotten out of bed several times to water the plants until they almost drowned, their stems growing languid and limp like worms. Sometimes she forgot to water them at all, until the sun made the stems so brittle a gust of wind could separate them from their roots.

Brenda's health worsened at a similar pace. As her mind fought its way through a jungle of terrifying senses and lost precious memories, the grapevines were choked with crawling ivy and the fruits were eaten up by squirrels.

The next year Brenda was buried next to Joel. Her grave had a bouquet of roses on it, the kind you get from the front of the grocery store, with red roses and baby’s breath and tacky pink carnations. In the years preceding her death, her kids stopped calling, tired of dealing with their senile mother. She was always adamant about being independent--when her daughter tried to get her a housekeeper she insulted her until she quit. So with no one to care for her and no memories of how to care for herself, she simply...faded.

The week after she was laid to rest, a landscaping company was hired to tame the thing that was once a garden. The ivy was peeled from the wall, taking with it the grapevines and the flower bushes, and the trees were trimmed. For just five hundred dollars, the yard was reduced to a large patch of grass with a single pear tree left standing. It was easier to care for, easier to sell.

Even though time has moved on, it’s still there, if you look close enough--the whispers of what once was. If you squint hard enough you can see it, in the way the dew frosts the grass blades, or how the pear tree still blooms (not as majestic as it once was, but it still counts for something).