Flowerboxes
When I built the flowerboxes, I never imagined that they would serve a dual purpose. I had taken it upon myself to build them, despite having little more than an enthusiast’s-level of woodworking skills, after learning that there had been a snag in ordering my mom’s headstone. It had been her wish that the stone be inscribed with both her and her husband Dave’s names jointly, and he had been having difficulty coming to terms with the idea. In a text exchange between he and I – one that would for many reasons be our last – he told me that he was “not dead yet” and would “deal with it when he was ready”.
Not really giving a shit about when Dave was going to be ready to come to terms with his mortality but definitely giving a huge shit about my mom’s plot just sitting there barren, with no way to mark who she was, where she was, why she was, I set out to build the flowerbox display for her as a stand in for the stone. After a solid day of Pinteresting, I found a tutorial for the ideal arrangement, a three-tiered display set in an A-frame made of cedar. I wrote down the measurements and a list of the supplies I needed and headed to Home Depot to get it done.
They say it’s a poor craftsman who blames his shoddy tools, but I didn’t have any tools, so I blamed the shoddy tool who cut my wood at the store. The instructions were simple, I needed nine 12x6’’ and three 6x6’’ panels of ¼’’ cedarwood. Perhaps if I had told the man the intended purpose of my project, he would have understood the importance of measuring and cutting correctly, but alas I did not and he did not.
At home, I assembled the jenky cuts as best I could, using a sandpaper to file down cuts that were too large and wood putty to fill the gaps where corners didn’t properly meet. I glued them together first, not realizing that I had bought the opaque wood glue instead of the transparent, which oozed sloppily out of every seam. I tried to wipe it where I could, and set them to dry. Later, I hammered them together with the thinnest nails I could find - many of which ended up jutting out the sides – but I figured that was okay, as it was unlikely there’d be too many passersby in the cemetery who might potentially snag themselves on a jagged edge. I was wrong about that.
I filled the boxes with potting soil and planted her favorite things, and whatever I thought would last through the late summer and early fall – mint in the first box on the lowest tier, garlic chives in the second on the middle tier, and succulents in the third on top. The arrangement looked nice, and despite being somewhat sloppy, it was better than there being nothing there at all.
They lasted well into September, with me going to tend them about once a week, cutting back the mint as I learned to do as I sat at her grave watching ehow videos. I liked the time I got to spend there, tending to the boxes and watering the plants. Some days I would sit there for hours cross legged, talking to her. I got to know the groundskeeper fairly well, and I liked him as he was about my age and very friendly, and above all didn’t seem to pass judgement on me for the amount of time I sat talking to nobody.
It was around this time in late fall when, relaxing in the bath one morning I received a text from my brother.
“Have you talked to Aunt Laura?” it said.
“No,” I replied.
“You need to call her now and the news is not good.”
I had had this feeling before, and I immediately began to rack my brain. Who else could be dead? My mom was already dead, so definitely not her. Laura and my brother were clearly texting me, so for sure they were alive. It could be Laura’s husband, I thought, he was a prominent sex crimes detective on the CPD – a risky line of work – and a daredevil at that. I got myself out of the tub, wrapped myself in a towel, sat on my bed and with hands shaking prepared to use my phone for it’s actual intended function (as a phone) for probably the first time this month – as doing so even for regular reasons was almost certainly a trigger for anxiety on any given day. She picked up.
“Did you hear or are you just calling me?”
“I’m just calling you.”
“Um, there was an accident, Ryan died. He was on his way to the base early this morning and lost control of his motorcycle, and he died Madeline.”
I didn’t know what to say, I think I muttered a series of “um, okay, um, okay, um, okay,” for a good minute or so, between gasps Laura replied,
“I know. I know. I know.”
And so, for the second time in two months I stuffed into the black gown and uncomfortable heels I had bought for the previous occasion and had sworn to never wear again. For the second time in two months we gathered at the Kobes Funeral Home, in the very same room where our family gave eulogies and cried, this time for my 25 year old cousin, The Marine, my friend. For the second time in two months we at the same sandwiches with too much mayo from the same deli, in the same basement of the same funeral home, my cousins and I once again sneaking out to our cars periodically to take shots of whiskey and to breathe.
And finally, for the second time in two months we gathered at the same cemetery where, at the plot directly in front of my mom’s we watched him be lowered into the ground.
But as those who have experience with this process may know, it is actually a fairly slow one. And as the logistics of lowering mechanism were being worked out, I couldn’t help but stare at the flowerboxes at the head of my mom’s grave, peeking out ever so slightly, now overgrown and wild and slightly dilapidated and worn by the October weather. I was ashamed of the way they looked, and wondered why I hadn’t spent more time to make a nicer arrangement. Dave, as it turns out, was still not “chill” with the idea of his own death five weeks later, and had not begun shopping for the stone. How had I not anticipated this? Why did I not take more time and care assembling the boxes? Why hadn’t I picked out a more resilient weatherproof wood stain? Why did I buy the wrong opacity of glue? Why had I let the plants become so overgrown? Why had I gone and gotten a hot dog instead of confronting the Home Depot tool? Why didn’t I own a miter saw? Why wasn’t I better with a hammer? Why was I such a failure? A fat, ham fisted failure? Why had I failed my mom?
I decided after Ryan’s funeral that I would remove the boxes, and replace them with something more appropriate to weather the winter months. Before so doing, I figured I’d text Laura to let her know as she now made daily visits to both plots and I didn’t want her to think they’d been taken. Much to my surprise, however, she objected.
“Don’t take them,” she said, “if you’re going to replace them, do you mind if I keep them for Ryan’s plot?”
I hadn’t felt so simultaneously flattered, honored, proud, and triumphant in some time. She continued,
“They haven’t sodded it yet, and it’s probably too late to sod.”
“Yes,” I replied, “It is probably too late to sod. They’re yours.”