Google photos pulled me into a wormhole today.

I probably should have backed out but I couldn’t. I laughed. I cried. There weren’t only pictures of Scott and all of our boys but also pictures all the way back to baby births. People I loved very much are gone. My Granny, my second dad (because we don’t say “step” or “half” in my family,) my beautiful nephew, my amazing husband. All gone in the last ten years. Three out of four in the last three years and two in the last five months. We have beautiful memories preserved in photos of all of them. Some made me smile. Others hurt my heart so much. There are so many moments I wish I could go back to.

My husband has sent me gifts, though, since he’s been gone. No, I don’t see dragonflies and white feathers everywhere. I do see cardinals because he and I put a bird feeder on the window to our side porch when we noticed a male and female cardinal always coming to that brick patio area and pecking around. After we bought the bird feeder and filled it up with bird seed especially for cardinals, they began to come to the feeder every day to eat and allowed us to watch them. We adopted them.

A couple of weeks ago, a tiny baby cardinal showed up. He’s brown right now but I still think he’s a boy because he has the little crown on top of his head like the daddy does. Mama flew up a minute later to join him. He’s such a cute little fella and Scott would have been so enamored of him, that we now also have a “grandbird.” That makes me smile. I’ve only seen the little guy twice, but I’m not as good about watching for them as my husband was.

I’ve blogged before about the necklace I got about a week after Scott was gone. He had ordered me a necklace with his thumbprint on one side and it says “We’ve got this.” on the other. We said that often. It started with Scott who would tell me all the time when I was worried or frustrated, “Baby, we’ve got this; we’ll get through it together.” Although that phrase is bittersweet to me now, and especially was on the day I received the necklace, it’s still a bold reminder of the fact that we could do anything together. I cherish that necklace, that unknowingly posthumous gift, but you won’t see me wearing it often. It’s small and fragile; I don’t want to ever risk losing or damaging it, but it’s always where I can pick it up and hold it for a few minutes in wonderment of the fact that, as he was the one struggling through the pain of a spinal injury, he thought to buy a gift to encourage me. That’s just who he was, all the time.

Another gift that I believe came from him may be a little more cryptic to others. My husband had a fantastic green thumb; he didn’t gift me with that, but I wish he had been able to. Early in our relationship he noticed a plant at my house that was almost dead. Well, it actually looked dead. My sweet Granny had died only six months before we met and this plant was from her funeral. I tried desperately but unskillfully to keep it alive and yet, even when I thought it was long gone, I hadn’t gotten rid of it. Scott said “I can save it; let me take it to my house for awhile.” I literally scoffed at him and said “Okay, go ahead; you’re welcome to try.” I think that I thought if he took it there and then had to get rid of it because it was unsalvageable, it might be easier that way. I also thought that I would feel like I really did everything I could. I did not believe he could save it. But I did not yet know of this particular talent of his.

I always over-water or under-water plants. I’ve killed everything from azaleas to cacti. I am seriously challenged in the plant-keeping department but I love them. I even bought a bouquet of tulips that looks and even feels like the real thing because that way I couldn’t help them die. But my husband, then my boyfriend, brought that plant back to life from the shadowy grips of death and it flourished. When he tried to bring it back to my house, I respectfully declined saying that I would kill it without meaning to. He said, “I’ll just check on it when I’m over here.” and I said “You don’t know the depth of my failure with plants; it would probably be dead before you got back.” So, he kept it until he moved to live in my house while we looked for a new house together. I don’t think a plant has died here since, although some are, sadly, quite close again now that he is gone.

I’ve been amazed, since we moved to our new house, how hard it is to kill a crepe myrtle. I love them because they are gorgeous when they flower. There were three different colors of crepe myrtles at our new home which we bought in January, 2020. One baby pink, one white, and one hot pink. When Scott cut them back, I got so upset. I said “They’re going to die now. There’s practically nothing left!” It seemed he had almost cut them back to half their size. Instead, they bloomed with even more flowers that spring.

Now, I know that crepe myrtles can self-propagate. We have two “babies” that appeared in our yard and have flourished quite naturally. They’re both the hot pink variety. But, within a month of Scott dying, a funny little plant began to pop up inside a square planter that stands just below our front porch steps. As it began to get larger, I thought “that does not look like anything that we picked out to put in those planters.” We had situated them more as giant dish gardens and spoke at length with the greenhouse about what would grow well together in that area of the house, with full morning sun and little shade.

One day I walked out the front door and suddenly realized what it was. It had bloomed with a gorgeous color of purple flowers I’ve never seen before but it was most definitely a crepe myrtle tree. I got in the car and drove up and down my street very slowly a couple of times. No purple crepe myrtles anywhere. I had thought that a seed from a nearby tree must have floated on the wind and somehow landed in that pot, right at my front door, but there were none to be found in that color. In fact, I haven’t yet seen another that color since this one arrived.

I researched on the internet. Hydrangeas can change color based on the acidity or alkalinity of the soil so maybe…nope; crepe myrtles don’t change colors. I don’t know how it showed up in my planter but it has grown to be over four feet tall. Today I decided to transplant it to an area in my front yard where it could continue to grow. That little tree had broken through the bottom of a heavy-duty plastic planter and was rooted into the soil beneath it. Solid boundaries could not contain it’s roots. I had to dig into the soil beneath the planter to free the roots and then break the planter to get it out, but I have re-planted it. There is a bit of browning on it and some of the roots broke but I’m trusting that resilient little guy is going to beat the odds…of having to live in my yard without Scott here.

My husband would know that keeping beautiful plants and trees alive would be one of my worries. I think He and God cooked up an unlikely surprise for me, something to make me smile but that I couldn’t inadvertently kill. (I’m still going to ask the guy who does my lawn to check on it and keep an eye on it for me, though, just to be safe.)

From memory photos, to baby birds, to jewelry, to blooming trees, and of course, to a beautiful granddaughter we eagerly anticipated together, I am learning to look for positive things in my grief. I can choose to belabor the fact that he isn’t here to enjoy all of these things, that the memories will only be just that, memories, forevermore because he’s not here to enjoy and make any new ones with me, but that is not going to help me step forward.

Side note: I have thought long and hard about this subject. This is semantics, perhaps, but I am not “moving on.” At least in my interpretation, moving on indicates leaving. “I’ve reached my top potential at this job; it’s time I moved on.”

I am moving forward. I will never leave my husband behind; he is such an enormous part of me. I am moving forward because sitting in my grief, as opposed to moving through it, is not serving me well. I think there may always be a part of me that doesn’t want to keep going without him, but I am still here and that is an indelible fact. I cannot remain my current age, refusing to move forward into the next year. I can no more choose to stay in the days when he was still beside me. If I must age then I must also adapt to these unwanted circumstances. To do that, I have to move forward, as there is no going back.

Today, I planted a beautiful tree, mysteriously gifted to me, in honor of the gifts that my husband has left with me. It’s just a “baby tree” right now but I’m going to do all that I can to grow it into a full, abundantly flowered, and delightful memorial of who my husband was to me and to the world. As it continues to grow, so will I. The tree isn’t blooming now, as we enter fall and then winter, but I expect extravagant purple blossoms in the spring. I will try my best to bloom into some version of happiness with it.