# Things That Grow

Memorial Day weekend had always been for planting, but this year, the garden felt different. The porch didn’t carry his voice. The side yard didn’t echo with his jokes. And yet the family came, tools in hand, ready to dig, ready to remember, even if no one spoke out loud the truth of the ritual.

The whole family acted out their respect for things that grew where they were planted, things that bloomed, things that died and were buried, but still remembered.

Luke, quiet and steady, took most of the digging on himself. His strength came less from muscles and more from the years he’d spent in soil, working the earth for strangers, now doing it for family. He listened more than he spoke, carving space where flowers would go, measuring depth by instinct.

grandmother directing the planting of flowers

Mary stood with a quiet authority, offering direction like a conductor without a baton, just a cane. “That one goes there,” she said, and it did. Her voice carried the memory of her husband—not in grief, but in rhythm. She knew where the shade landed at 2 PM, which roots tangled too easily, how wide to space the brighter blooms. She didn’t need to say his name. Every gesture remembered him.

Lynne leaned over the new bed with determination, sleeves pushed up, her hair in her eyes. Lori crouched nearby, laughter in her voice as she sorted bulbs, dirt dusting her knees. Lisa took quiet pride in aligning the patterns, creating curves in the mulch that echoed the ones they’d walked together for years. Each woman moved like muscle memory, as if their hands knew what to do before their minds caught up.

There were small debates over placement— “Farther apart?” “Right here, or back a bit?” —but consensus came easy. These were the daughters of Ken, and though his absence was never named, it shaped everything. They moved around it, never through it, like a sculpture that couldn’t be seen but could be felt by every hand.

“You want a brighter one here?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Even the decisions carried a hush of reverence.

There were shovels and sweat and the occasional clatter of clippers, but the conversation drifted from golf swings to worship internships to how many plants Luke once planted in a summer. Someone mentioned ashes buried in a landscape job years ago, and for a moment, the silence almost came back. No one said what they were all thinking. Then Mary’s voice rose again, calling attention to another corner needing flowers, and the day resumed its soft forward pull.

Ken had not been named. But he had been remembered.

In the way Luke dug, like someone honoring what lies below. In the way Mary stood just so, eyes scanning the pattern. In the way the daughters knelt to the soil—dirt under nails, backs aching, but unwilling to stop. In the way the granddaughters jumped in here and there. In the way Mathew brought a friend.

And in the way the flowers leaned toward the light, quietly growing around the place where he used to live.