‘It will bring people together,’ he said. And he was right.
DRIVING HOME from Boston on the afternoon of May 5, Ron and Cindy didn’t talk much. There wasn’t much to say. A team of doctors had just told them that Ron’s esophageal cancer – diagnosed only days before – was inoperable. No cure. No hope of long-term survival. With radiation and chemo, Ron might have nine months to a year.
They’d been together since high school. He was only 60. They’d been looking forward to retirement, maybe to traveling a little, to the birth of their second grandchild. Now suddenly they were figuring out what they wanted to do over the next nine months to a year. “I’d like to have a garden,’’ Ron said.
Cindy was surprised – he’d never grown anything, never expressed the slightest interest in gardening. “That would be nice,’’ she said vaguely, imagining a couple of tomato plants.
Four days later, she came home from work to find the yard filled with men, boards, dirt, a Bobcat, and a 20-by-30-foot raised garden. Ron, who had recently marked his 29th year of sobriety, had mentioned at an AA meeting that he wanted a garden, and his friends had showed up to build him one.
He was sitting in a chair, watching, talking, laughing. There was no last-wish solemnity about the scene; Cindy was struck by how happy and relaxed they all seemed. Ron tried to pay for the materials; the guys wouldn’t let him. Cindy kept thanking them, telling them how amazing they were. When they left, she turned to Ron. “Have we met? You don’t garden. I don’t garden. This thing is gigantic – what the hell are we going to do with it?’’
“I think it will bring people together,’’ he said.
Over the next days he was able to sit by the garden sometimes, but soon pain and exhaustion kept him in bed. “Nine months is optimistic,’’ the radiologist said.
Friends stopped by; they didn’t want to tire Ron, or tax Cindy too much by asking for details of how he was – it was clear how he was – so they worked in the garden. They planted seeds and seedlings. Cindy’s brother installed a sprinkler system. Neighbors planted corn. Ron and Cindy’s 8-year-old grandson made a path, using leftover flagstones he found lying around the yard. Visitors came, didn’t know what to say, and weeded.
Ron died on June 7. After the funeral people went back to the house and wandered out to look at the garden. Ron and Cindy’s grandson ran around handing out radishes, strawberries, and lettuce leaves. Men in suits were hoeing, staking tomato plants.
All summer, the garden became a quiet focus for people who’d known Ron. It produced like crazy: beans, cucumbers, peppers, squash, okra, beets, basil, and more tomatoes than anyone knew what to do with. People who otherwise might have been too shy to visit were comfortable dropping by to weed and water and harvest, and they ended up talking, telling Cindy funny stories, or stories of how Ron had helped them. They stood out in the dirt and cried. Ron had been right that the garden would bring people together. It couldn’t cure anything or heal the loss or soften grief and loneliness, but it gave everyone something to do.
After 39 years of marriage, Cindy knew Ron very well, but he was always capable of surprising her. Once, fishing for him to say something romantic, she’d asked what he thought it took to have a good marriage. There was a silence. Then he said, “I think both people have to be willing to ignore a lot of things’’ – but he said it gently, thoughtfully. It startled her and made her laugh; and she realized he was right. His wish for this garden, she thought, came from that same mysterious place: something unexpected that actually went straight to what mattered.
She was careful, picking vegetables over the summer, not to romanticize the garden too much, not to turn him into Saint Ron, but at the same time to appreciate his clarity, to let herself feel how deeply she had been cared for and was still cared for.
“I don’t want this to become a memorial garden after I’m gone,’’ Ron had told her. “Just enjoy it. Have an eggplant on me.’’
Joan Wickersham’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Her website is joanwickersham.com.