The Complicated Lives of Marigold Flowers

“You can’t have the Nguomi mask”.

“What?”, Dan asked.

“It was my idea to buy it, after all”, Mary stated matter-of-factly.

“You know that thing is a fake", he responded dryly.

Dan never saw the value in things that he didn’t deem had actual value. Dan was a pragmatist.

He stared at the solitary Marigold flower resting on the table between them. He never understood flowers, either. Sure, they had a certain level of visual appeal about them, but to pay for them? Well that was a crime he just could not forgive. The petals began to wilt.

“Whatever—just don’t touch the kids’ college fund.” He did however, value education. It was the basis for everything valuable that had and was to come in this world. You do good work, you get a report card that reflects said work, you get a job: the transaction was simple and logical.

Mary liked flowers. To her, they represented Mother Gaia’s unfailing dedication to every last inhabitant of this perfect earth. Mary hated that Dan hated art and flowers.

“Hi folks, have we decided on what we want to eat this evening?”, the server asked cheerfully.

“Do you have any vegan options?”, Mary asked. Dan rolled his eyes.

“I’ll take the filet, medium rare,” he interjected. Mary scoffed in disgust.

“Have you ever seen what happens in those slaughterhouses, Dan?”

“Perhaps I’ll come back in a few moments”, the server said.

Twenty years in a loveless marriage was twenty years too many. That was one thing they agreed on. “Opposites attract.” That was the mantra they had repeated for so many years that they barely noticed the slow disintegration of what was never a harmonious union. Some time back this fact was brought to light after Dan discovered a $300 charge from a local yoga studio on their credit card bill. He was incensed. “Why in God’s name would you pay so much for such a thing when there’s a perfectly acceptable gym at the YMCA down the road?!”, Dan implored. They knew it was over.

Alas, they had decided it was best to wait until the kids had finished high school and were out of the house before ending it. No one was sure it was the right decision.

I guess relationships are complicated.

***

The sun’s morning rays shone brightly, resting happily on the lovely bouquet of Marigolds on the bedside table. Although he hadn’t slept in exactly 48 hours, Chris could barely contain his excitement.

He always wanted to be a dad, for as long as he could remember. Both Julie and he came from large, Irish Catholic families who valued, above all, two things: faith and children. The two were not mutually exclusive.

“I can’t believe this is real!”, Julie exclaimed. Life was easy for them. Sure, they had their share of spats over trivial things like whether to eat Indian or Chinese for dinner, but in large they had uncomplicated shared objectives: work hard, save money, have lots of kids. And by their measures, they were off to a fantastic start.

“When are they arriving?”, Julie asked.

“My parents should be here any minute,” Chris responded, rubbing the thick, dark rings under his eyes.

“I thought we agreed my parents would be first?” This was not the arrangement they had discussed—or at least the one Julie remembered. A storm brewed on the sunny horizon.

Chris had no idea what she was talking about. Julie could not believe he had forgotten their agreement.

“Don’t you remember our discussion??” Julie implored. Chris shrugged his shoulders, barely able to keep his head afloat. “You know, since my brother in-law’s parents were first to see my sister’s first kid, we thought it would be great to have my parents be first for ours…?” He was scared to answer.

The truth is, Julie was right. They had agreed on that. Chris was too absorbed with checking his fantasy football scores at the time to notice. He had just made a critical trade after all.

But the other truth is that his parents had to attend the funeral of his uncle later that afternoon and had a limited window of time that they would be able to see their firstborn grandson. He had also neglected to share this with Julia.

I guess relationships are complicated.

***

“Let us not think of death as the end, but instead as a new beginning”, the preacher’s voice bellowed across the crowd clad in black.

Tears streamed down Ariana’s face. “She was such an amazing woman,” Aunt Agnes said, placing her arm across Ariana’s shoulder. Ariana’s thoughts were conflicted. She loved her grandmother deeply; that’s what made the recent revelation so heartbreaking.

Beatrice and Edward lived a long and fulfilling life together. She had heard the story a thousand times. Beatrice had pledged her undying devotion to Edward just moments before he cast off to defend not only the honor of a nation but to protect the virtue of a world under siege.

Beatrice and Edward were soulmates; nothing could come between their love. Well, that is, except for a dashing young traveling button salesman Beatrice met at a local jazz club one night, not long after Edward departed.

Ariana stared at the bouquet of freshly cut Marigolds she had placed at the foot of the gravestone. She wished at that moment that human love was as simple as a flower’s.

Everything was illuminated a few days before her passing. The result of one of those new Ancestry DNA Kits, a man had reached out to Ariana after discovering they were a close genetic match. It didn’t take much to figure out he was her uncle.

But Ariana was not one to judge. She was a thinker. She had tried to put herself in her grandmother’s place, trying to imagine the incredible fear she must have been feeling, thinking there was such a slim chance that she would ever see her first love again. Life was hard in those days, she decided.

Her grandmother had served as a sole inspiration to her for so many years. After being estranged from her parents as a teen, she had gone to live with Beatrice who welcomed her with accepting arms. It’s not that her parents were bad people, they just had their problems, specifically with heroin. That was a genetic thing she figured, so they were worthy of her empathy. Ariana was a forgiving person.

She never had the chance to bring it all up with her grandmother. Which made her uncomfortable. There was one moment that felt like it could be right as she sat at Beatrice’s bedside, listening to her recount the “good ol’ days” of her time with Edward. The words sat idly at the front of her lips, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak them.

I guess relationships are complicated.

***