Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: EXPECTATION (01/28/21)
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TITLE: A Growing Chorus | Previous Challenge Entry
By Tracy Nunes
02/03/21 -
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His old workshop. The grandkids wooden swing set. Carlita’s flower beds and raised vegetable garden. Her greenhouse.
What would she say if she could see her gardens now? She loved growing things. Loved seeing new life come every spring.
He’d tried hard to keep them going after she was gone. Though weedy and ragged, the flowers still grew with seeds that fell from last year’s blossoms. The vegetable beds were empty. The plastic on the greenhouse they’d built together, and fought about, fluttered in the wind like a white flag of surrender. He’d thought about taking them down a while back. Leaving them like that seemed wrong. But he couldn’t bring himself to dismantle them. She’d labored over them with such love, it would be like saying goodbye to her all over again. No, life was not like he thought it would be.
He looked at her picture on the table next to his chair. Her brown eyes still made his heart do flips. His throat swelled as he remembered her last words.
“Emile, remember what is important.”
He’d worked hard those first few years to keep it all together, thinking that somehow, someway, it would hold him together too. And not let her too-early death mean the end of her memory. That’s what seemed important then. For three years after she died, he thought he was doing what she’d said. The kids came and helped. The grandkids too. They’d talk about her and work together. They’d remember.
Then life got busy for the kids and Emile got older. Gradually, little by little, he left some things undone – and over time, more things. She wasn’t here anymore. What was the use? Besides, watching sports with the grandkids, Sunday dinner at their son Emilio’s house, and staying alive, filled his time.
One day, on the way home from his granddaughter’s softball game, everything changed. He’d turned on the radio in his car. Silence. Thinking it was broken, he fidgeted with the dial and suddenly, a woman was saying, “Have you forgotten what’s important?” Emile slammed on his brakes to avoid the motorcycle stopped in front of him. The shock of the unexpected words hit him with such force, he could barely wave an apology to the rider as he pulled over to the side of the rode. Emile was shaken. It was just a stupid commercial about some new wonder supplement. But those words might as well have been Carlita with a megaphone. He sat in stunned silence for a long time.
He’d played and pretended that keeping her flowers growing was what mattered to Carlita most. She loved dirt under her fingernails and butterflies fluttering around her flowers, but her heart sang for her Lord. And what she wanted more than anything was that her family sing that same song. To know what mattered most. In the years since she’d gone, they’d all forgotten.
Emile gathered himself, turned the car around and drove across town to the little church Carlita had called her second home. When he walked in the door, her pastor smiled like he was expecting him.
Emile remembered all of this while looking out the window into the back yard. He’d forgotten for a while. He surely had. Carlita’s pastor became his pastor and friend. And Sunday his favorite day. His family loved him but none of them expected the changes in him. They thought some were good as Emile became more patient, less sad. But it took them time to understand this new man. Sometimes, it got rough and Emile remembered with regret all the times he had not understood Carlita. Over time, many of them joined the chorus. A song of hope and deliverance. He still prayed for the others who hadn’t.
He slowly rocked, thanking God for all He had done. Gratitude filled his heart. And that was enough.
As Emile began to doze, an unexpected lightness settled over him. Weightless, yet deep, it filled him with a powerful sense of peace. He felt himself rising. His eyes were closed but his spirit could see clearly as he slipped into eternity, joining Carlita in a song of praise.
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