Remembrance

Day 221: Had my father lived to this date, he would have been approaching the century mark. He did not. He was deprived of life by diabetes when he was merely 39 years of age.

A competent and intelligent man who worked in a military office, he was born into a farming family and never lost his love for working the soil. It was he who first associated his black-haired daughter with the crows who later gave her her nickname, a girl who delighted in the poem he recited as he would place four kernels of corn in each hill in his garden.

"One for the worm,
One for the crow,
One to die
And one to grow."

For the most part, he grew the vegetables which my mother canned for winter use: asparagus, green beans, corn, potatoes and peas, the last of which I refused to eat once cooked. He grew enormous Hubbard squash and delicate Patty-Pans. He grew rhubarb with leaves the size of umbrellas and stalks as thick as his daughter's wrists. He grew fruit, an orchard of apples, cherries, pears and peaches, and strawberries, raspberries and dewberries which bore so lavishly that the birds were allowed to enjoy those remaining after the larder was full of jars of jam and the freezer packed with bulging bags.

In its way, his garden was his daily labour, a job which callused his hands, made his back ache and left him tired in that rewarding way only honest toil can do. He loved it, yes, but he also loved the lighter work to be had in the flowerbeds. He loved irises and calla lilies, and wantonly pulled Oriental poppies, convinced that they were some sort of thistle, but of all the blooming plants, he loved none so much as a blood-red peony.

When my father went into the hospital to live out his last months, he predicted that he would not see the light of Spring. He did not. He died an hour before sunrise on the first day of the season. But it is not that day when my heart visits his spirit. It is when the peonies bloom.