THE WHITE FLOWER

Just humour him, they told me.
It's easier that way. Let him talk about anything, even if it makes no sense.
His eyes, in his pale face are as bright as a clear blue sky on a sunny day. His once curly black hair, now spreads over his high forehead, in straight silver strands. These days when he listens he is calm and sweet. Only a few times have I seen the old emotions burst and flare out of him. Seen the emotional sparks flicker and race over the white walls and over me. I learned long ago to sit and wait. Wait for the stillness  to return and reconcile us both in its uneasy silence. 

I sit beside his bed.

There's a small white gardenia, on the old wooden bedside table.

Its perfume fills the space, its whiteness glows in the darkened bedroom.

My old friend is restless today, in his double bed.

His long thin fingers, tap time, on the folded back white sheet

'You know, in my fanciful thinking days, I used to think,

I had hands meant for a pianist. My head was full of fanciful foolish thoughts in my youth.

Do you see where I've been pulling out these weeds? doesn't the soil look rich where I've turned it over.

But if the soil is so rich, why does this bush have no flowers. It's their time to bloom you know. Whatever is the name of this bush! I once knew the names of every plant in my garden. Just the way one knows the name of all in their family. But not now. Why I could close my eyes, and ask a child to pick a leaf, or a bloom from the garden, and then have them place it in my palm, and with closed eyes I'd tell them what its  name was. The rough petals of the fading  hydrangeas were easy to guess. They had a sort of sand papery edge.

I turned the tables on a child one day and  said, 'now you  close your eyes and tell me what you think this feels like.' I placed a few petals of the hydrangea on his palm and then pressed his thumb firmly down on them. He told me quick as anything, that it felt like one of the flakes from his breakfast Wheaties  packet. We both had a good  laugh about that. I never forgot that little child, I thought it was a wonderful response.'

My old friend's memories rise as from a sunken vessel. They float on the surface for a moment and then sink back down with the weight of the past. The world of yesterday.

'Why everywhere I look I see flowers. It must be my imagination playing tricks on me. But surely this is real? Look and tell me if you can see it too'. 

I asked my old friend what it was he saw, He replied, 'why the walls, they are covered in her image. and the tiny vase that holds the gardenia, it has a miniature image of her face painted on it. See how the vase is surrounded with a swirl of red, blue and gold light. And there's something to think on. See how my image is beside hers on the little vase. I'd never noted, that we are actually there together. One could almost say, as one.'  But try as I might, I could only see the face of my old friends dead wife.