It was just one year ago on May 22, 2025 that Norma, my wife of fifty years, died suddenly. I’m still wrestling with the impact of that, and I expect I will for the rest of my life. In my dream world she won’t leave me alone.
When we put our home of thirty years up for sale and moved into a condo to downsize it was my expectation that Norma would find it a good place to live out her life if she were alone. I wanted her to feel safe and comfortable. Little did I expect that it would be me who would end up alone, but here I am.
Over the course of the last year, I’ve spent countless hours transforming the garden space that surrounds three sides of the condo. Norma and I had planned to do it together. Although for fifty years, I’ve always been the one to plant and tend a garden, she was looking forward to planting flowers. Life and death intervened, but she did get one plant in the ground, a small Hydrangea in a plastic pot she received from a friend as a housewarming gift. I helped her find a just right shady spot and provided her with a spade to dig a proper hole. In fifty years it was the first and last flowering plant she ever put into the ground.
Now the year has gone by, and that Hydrangea is doing well; it’s beginning to develop what will be a lovely display of magenta flowers. To mark Norma’s passing, I’ve mixed some of her ashes into the soil around it. Norma will literally become part of the Hydrangea over time, and in that way will exist within the living system of the garden forever, or at least for a very long time. When my end comes, romantic that I am, I want my ashes to be mixed into that soil with hers.
There were times over the many years when we’d get philosophical about our long lives together. “See you the next time around,” I’d say, as if the orbits of our selves would continue to spin around each other. It felt good to be so connected, as if such things might last forever. Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t.
Buddhism teaches kindness towards all living things with the advice that any one of them could have been your mother. Setting aside a literal belief in reincarnation, the fact is that each and every living thing is comprised of atoms that have been combining, disintegrating, and recombining for at least four-and-a-half billion years. Taken as a metaphor, “mother” in the Buddhist sense means that what we are is endlessly recycled stuff, and who or what it was before is anyone’s guess. Nature is the mother of us all, and given another billion years or so, perhaps Norma and I will come together again and again after all.
Although a loving and loyal wife, Norma didn’t love everything I did. On the contrary, her wit and sharp intelligence made her my toughest critic. But she was unequivocal about one thing. “I love your gardens,” she would say, and I knew she meant it. Now she is the garden. I see and care for her daily, and that feels just right.
