Haiku #37

I may not post much,

but you are always with me

and we talk daily.

Haiku #36

The first warm Spring day.

Doors opened, airing the house.

Irene loved the smell!

Haiku #35

Crocus are blooming.

Daffodils are in full bud.

Irene's favorite time.

Haiku #34

Wild flowers blooming.

Cadbury eggs are on sale.

Spring two is now near.

A Surprise

Several people sent Irene plants and flowers when she was home on hospice.  There was one mum and several bulbs, tulips and daffodils.  I planted the mum and bulbs in the two terraces Irene built beneath the fig tree after she died.  It was the Irene Memorial Flower Bed.

Nothing happened the spring of 2011, and I figured I had planted them too late and everything had died.

I can see the fig tree from the kitchen sink window, and one day last week I noticed green where there was none before.  I went out and took a look, and to my surprise the bulbs had poked new leaves up through the ground!  I will have to watch to see if the mum made it too!

Haiku #33

Sunday we sang, "He

will raise you up on eagle's

wings", and I saw you.

The Last First

Today is the last first - the first anniversary of Irene’s death and the beginning of year two.  Looking back, it is hard to realize that a year has passed.  It seemed appropriate to mark the end of the first year by interring Irene’s ashes today.

We had discussed our desires years ago and both decided that we wanted to be cremated.  I attended the funeral of a friend who was buried at the National Cemetery outside of Eagle Point, OR some years ago.  It is in a rural setting on a hill overlooking a beautiful valley.  Since I am a Vietnam veteran with an honorable discharge, Irene & I can both be interred there.

In 2010, I learned that the cemetery was building a columbarium.  Irene & I decided we would like to be interred in a niche there.  The columbarium was recently completed, and I was notified just before Christmas that I could inter Irene.

It was a perfect “Reene Day”.  We had rain in the morning with afternoon clearing, blue skies and puffy white clouds and a daily high of around 50F.  It was an afternoon that would have found Irene in her garden wearing her grubby garden blue jeans and flannel shirt, both with holes, covered in mud with a big smile on her face.

Given the valiant fight Irene waged with cancer and the life example she set for many, it is only fitting that she rest in a field of heroes as she is a heroine to many.