Irises and Memories

Irises and memories. I've told this story before, but it's the season to tell it again.

My eighty-something year-old neighbor, Keith who lives on the street behind us, walks his little yorkie, Scottie around the block at least six or seven times a day. Perhaps more. He is our unofficial "neighborhood watch." Really a very sweet man with story after story to tell.

Keith knows the history of my neighborhood as well as the original owners from whom we bought our circa 1946 house--stories of the war and afterward when GI's were coming home to brides they barely knew and were trying to establish their lives by settling into homes purchased on the then, "new GI bill." He knows this area right down to the dirt, and he ought to, he's invested enough into it, in both $ and pure heart.

Keith's wife loved flowers and gardening so much that over the years he figures he spent over $10,000 on prize irises, daylilies, callas and peonies. The irises are the thing though. We never met Keith's wife--I can't remember what he told me her name was--by the time we moved into the neighborhood, she was in a nursing home, declining with Alzheimer's disease and forgetting the beauty that she created in her home, in her backyard and in Keith's heart. He never failed from the first day she entereed the nursing home to be with her, even when she couldn't remember him or why he came.

Last year, about mid-summer, after the irises had bloomed and withered back, Keith's wife finally released herself from the cares of this world.

I saw him shortly after her funeral. He was worried about the irises and the job that he would have weeding and dividing them for the coming fall. I told him that I would be happy to help him one Saturday morning and he generously offered whatever iris bulbs I wanted. I came home with seventy five in all.

That afternoon, I cut enough sod away from the railroad tie border in my front yard--just enough to put all seventy five in my front window's view. While I was on my knees digging and planting, I looked up and there was Keith and Scottie, watching. He offered me a few pointers in optimal planting and I was grateful. I lifted my head to express my gratitude and looked right into his tear filled eyes. "Thank you," he softly managed, choking back the tears. "Now I'll see her on THIS side of the street too." Then MY eyes filled. I could not speak.

Keith still walks the block every day, six or seven times a day. I watch him out my window sometimes as he passes by softly whispering to the blooms and to his wife who lives in them in my front yard.