He said it the way he said things that were obvious to him and that he found slightly amusing to have to explain, with the smile that had been the first thing I noticed about him when we met at a church social in 1968.
He always brought me red and yellow flowers on our anniversary. Every year. For forty-one years he brought me those colors.I said: it’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever made me.
He said: it’s just a garden.
I said: it’s not just a garden.
He knew that too.
Roy died in March of 2011.
He was sixty-seven years old, which is not old enough, though I am aware that there is no age that would have felt old enough, that the specific age at which he died would have felt premature regardless of what it was because he was still himself, completely himself, still the man with the Saturday projects and the anniversary flowers and the smile that took its time arriving.
He had a heart attack. He was in the garden, which was where he spent Saturday mornings when the weather allowed, tending it with the same attention he had built it with.They told me it would have been very fast.
I have chosen to believe this.
After he died, I kept the garden exactly as he had made it.
