Silent as our cars stay parked in the driveway. As the children stay home instead of playing in the parks or schoolyards. Silent for those who have left us too early. From this virus. From cancer. Silent as we contemplate life after this.She chose a beautiful day to go. In fact she went in her sleep in the wee hours of the morning, the call from his distraught father waking my husband and me up. I managed to go back to sleep a little anyway and woke around 7:00. As I went downstairs I could see from the hazy sky that it would be another gorgeous blue-sky day. Unseasonably warm for April.
Even her funeral was more silent than usual. Only a few family members came as the others were afraid of the virus and we were limited to 20 people maximum, including the pall bearers.
No church service, only the flowers my husband and I could find in his greenhouse. A few arrangements were delivered from customers. But it wasn't what my husband wanted to offer her.
I have to believe she would understand though. Where she is now there are millions of flowers she never needs to prune or water or repot. Unless she wants to. Now she is in a place with no cancer.
Now we continue. Confinement is tough. The walls seem to close in on us. Even the garden seems smaller everyday as I do my little inspection of the new growth. We are edgy, grumpy at times. We start to lack motivation for all those projects we thought we'd get to.
But for those who are still working, like my husband, it's tough too. Feeling as if you are the only one still out there while the others rest at home.
"Tu peux pas savoir", my father-in-law kept saying this week as he dealt with the pain of losing his wife. "You can't know what it's like." He is right. I can't know what it's like to lose someone you knew for 46 years (my whole life). And unless you have lived in lockdown before or worked non-stop amidst this virus, you can't know either.
We helped my husband out some this week, braving the lockdown rules, being stopped once by the gendarmes and having to show our "déclaration sur honneur" that we printed from the Internet. I know we are doing the right thing though chasing Alex in the greenhouse while my eleven-year old alternately pouts or sighs (though she has come around and is a great helper!) has been something of a nightmare. At least we have helped a little.
And this week they were allowed to truly open to the public to sell their plants. We have been blessed with amazing weather during this lockdown and people have the time to garden. So the clients have been streaming in, some with masks and gloves, some blissfully uncareful even shaking hands with my husband. Some give their condolences about my mother-in-law who they knew from the cash register.
As Alex scoots around on his little tractor and we put the radio on to repot baby plants, spring has become less silent. We hear the chatter of customers, laughs about what a strange world we are living in.
We hear birds more clearly too as there is less traffic to drown out their songs. We hear conversations with elderly neighbors in the middle of the day that normally wouldn't take place. We hear voices of friends on the phone that we would otherwise text or wait for church or tea time to see.
And for the first time in a while, we hear hope. That there will be an "after" and that things will get better. Maybe a little silence did us some good. If only to appreciate that melody of sounds even more.
