The Next Chapter: Forever love
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 4, 2026
By Ruby E. Carlino
It was late spring and the flowers in the garden were in bloom. The California poppies I planted in mass were all flowering in vivid colors. The bees were busy visiting the towering foxgloves and hollyhocks, and the hydrangeas were starting to show hints of budding as we anticipated the first blush of summer.
An elderly gentleman stopped by my side garden. He was not an unfamiliar sight. Since moving into our neighborhood, I’d seen him walking around the area with a petite elderly woman. I was struck by the sight of them. He was quite tall and she was very short, and they always took their walks in the afternoon while holding hands.
When I did not see them often during the pandemic, I would fret that something had happened to them. I did not know their names. We were nodding acquaintances, and we occasionally said hello. But they were always the sweetest looking couple I have ever seen. When vaccinations become available and places started opening again, I was relieved to see them walking their usual route in the neighborhood.
But one spring I did not see them for a long time. By late season, when the world was ablaze with colors, I saw him walking by himself. That’s when I saw him stopped by my side yard admiring the flowers. There was no one else with him; then I realized he appeared to be talking to himself.
I went over to say hello. He smiled gently and he told me he was telling his wife about my flowers. I must have looked confused. He explained that his wife of over 60 years, the love of his life, had passed away after a sudden illness. They married out of high school 60 years ago, and he missed her every day, he told me. Even without him telling me how much he missed her, I could tell. He could not stop talking about her. Then he solemnly said almost in a whisper that his world was dark and he was just counting time till they could be together again.
Heavy with grief , he sounded as if he was carrying a wounded heart over his shoulders. He still talked to her every day, he said, and he was telling her about the daisies and the lilies running rampantly with the poppies in my garden. For himself, the world had lost its color since she was gone but he said she would have really enjoyed the flowers in my yard.
What words of comfort can one say to a man who had been married over six decades to a woman who is no longer here? So I told him that he was welcome to visit the garden whenever he felt like it, even if he did not talk to me. I knew he had adult children and grandchildren nearby, and I commented that he might find something of interest that would keep him occupied. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “There’s nothing that interests me these days.” We talked a little longer — that is, he mostly talked about his departed wife — and I was happy to listen. Then he said goodbye and went on with his long walk.
I saw him a few more times, walking and stopping in the garden that summer. At the height of the flowering season, I prepared a bouquet for him but he did not show up. When I saw him later, I told him I had some cut flowers for him to take home. He looked at me with a sad gaze and said that they were beautiful in the garden. As soon as you cut them, they start dying, he added. Leave them be and enjoy their brief and beautiful lives were his parting words. That was the last time I saw him.
Oliver Sacks once wrote that “There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled … ”
But we love, anyway, knowing love and loss are inseparable, just as life and death. Perhaps that’s all there is to life, to live our brief and beautiful lives, to love well and fully, shaped by every beginning and all the unavoidable endings. What is life, otherwise, if we fear walking in the sun because sundown is just hours away?
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Ruby E. Carlino is a published writer and former technology analyst. In Sequim since 2018, she’s at home in the garden and brings a broad perspective to her work (rain or shine). She can be reached at nextchaptercolumn@proton.me.
