When we bought the house, I could envision the trash heap at the back door of our new home transformed into an herb garden. It wasn’t the first thing I attacked when we bought the house, the front needed more love, but it was on my list. The spring I planned to attack the herb garden was the spring we learned the nursing home would be my mother’s last home.
She had been ill for a while but had always rallied. This time there would be no rallying. My garden plans were delayed again, I thought as I ran by the dirt pile, jumped in the car, and headed off to visit Mom. The soil had been prepped so I threw in a packet of oregano seeds I had on hand and thought I would figure the rest out later. To be fair, the rock that stuck up at the back door might lead many to think it was unusable but the trash heap the former owner had created became the compost that fed my garden dreams.
Mom’s memory was fading at the nursing home as vascular dementia took over. One day Mom would be excited that Barkley, my sister’s beagle, had come to visit but didn’t know her daughter. Another time she didn’t recognize her son or the two granddaughters in front of her but recognized the voice of another granddaughter on the phone. Dementia does strange things. Her face would light up whenever Dad walked into the room and it was as if no one existed but the two of them. We would leave the two of them alone until Dad couldn’t handle the changes in the woman he had known for more than 50 years.
Before I showed her my garden pictures, I first introduced myself so she had some sense of where I fell in the hierarchy of those coming in and out of her room. While she struggled daily to find her memories, the oregano, also known as origanum vulgare, thrived, unattended, and filled the back door garden. Oregano signifies joy and happiness and it was good to see something thrive.
Mom was in the wing of a nursing home that held those who, no matter their age, were there their brains were failing. Weekly meetings about her status were never positive but they were filled with information from folks trained to provide facts and comfort but not hope. Most days at the nursing home, once introductions were out of the way, I would prattle on about one thing or another to fill the silence and to see if anything I said triggered her memory. Usually, she fell asleep and I would knit to keep my hands busy while my mind ran wild with all the things that needed to be done for her, for the garden, for work, for whatever would happen next. By this time the oregano was blooming. It filled the herb garden, waving in the wind and attracting bees. I let it be, there were other things that needed more attention.
Mom would have appreciated a rogue herb taking over an entire garden bed. I struggled to see the woman who had taught me about soil, weeding, and plant identification as the woman sitting on the bed asking me to tell her what was in the picture.
My husband and I spent what turned out to be Mom’s last day with her. Her memory had returned. She told us she was watching a movie about her life on the wall and she wanted to play gin rummy. Unable to stay awake long enough to complete a hand, she knew when we tried to skip her play. At 4 am the next morning she quietly stopped breathing. A friend gave me a rose bush in remembrance of my mother. It came with no tags but the next summer it bloomed white with a blush pink center. It’s beautiful. It’s been 15 years and that oregano is still a part of my herb garden and the rose bush has a prominent spot in the front yard.
Each year I cut the oregano to allow other herbs and flowers to grow, but I’ll never get rid of it altogether. I talk to the rose bush each year as it blooms, as it needs trimming, and as I ready it for another winter.
It took a few years for me to replace the memories of my mother’s last months with memories of how she was before she became ill. When we sell this house, these are the two plants I’ll need to have with me.
A. E. Macdonald's Writing Life 