I’m Planting Flowers

That one year mark to Kaitlyn’s death is fast approaching. I never call it an anniversary, how can I give something that terrible, a date so dreaded, a date that has taken me one year farther away since my daughter was living, the dignity of having such a name? I won’t. I never will. It’s that one year MARK. Don’t know why I call it a mark though, I guess it’s just one more mark in my heart that makes the wound even deeper. I don’t know, I’ve not thought about what “mark” means, but it’s not as nice as “anniversary.” It does not deserve a name that nice.

My husband’s out there mowing the yard because it’s filled with the weeds that start growing way before the grass does. Evidence of spring is all out there. I look at it sometimes, I feel it when I go to the mailbox or am forced to go out into the world and run errands.

Last spring I didn’t put the flowers out on my porch like I always did. I always put those pretty red geraniums in a pot on each side of my steps. I didn’t care that my porch looked bare. I did have a spring wreath on my door, but I had gotten that and put it on my door before Kaitlyn died.

So I guess it’s time to put the spring things out….drag out the spring wreath and when they put geraniums out I’ll go buy two big pots of those. Me and my other daughter Stephanie are planting Kaitlyn a memorial garden soon and I don’t want it to be the only thing out there that says spring at my house. I might as well embrace spring somehow because it’s happening whether I like it or not. But it will forever mean when Kaitlyn died. Until the day I draw my last breath, spring will be when Kaitlyn died. But she loved flowers and by gosh….I’m planting flowers.