Unexpected Gifts
March 19th, 2007
Two years ago today, Terah and I had gone to visit my grandpa in the nursing home. His health was not good. After we visited him and ate dinner, we drove home. Not long after we got home, we got a call saying that grandpa was doing worse. We went back to the nursing home, but he had passed away before we got there.
I don’t remember his wife, my grandma. She died of cancer when I was just a year old. I was the only grandchild she knew, and everyone tells me how much she liked to see me.
I had no idea, late that evening two years ago, that this March would find us living on their farm. I remember visiting the farm one or twice after that. It seemed so eerily still, knowing grandpa would never be back, yet remembering all the time I spent here. The house wasn’t doing so well. Would it survive?
Recently, we started noticing these:
These are daffodils and tulips that my grandma planted back when she was doing well, probably before I was born. They have had little or no care for more than 25 years. They have survived lawnmowers, car tires, large rocks, drought, fire trucks, rabbits, and trenchers. And they still came up this year!
Thanks, grandma, for the welcome home gift.
Categories: General
Very touching, John. If those are in front of the rocks across from the house, I remember going with Mom to dig them up from under the hedge that runs parallel with the driveway (to the north). I don’t know how she ever spotted them there or why they would have been growing there, but Mom had an eye for flowers.
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John Goerzen Reply:
March 20th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Thanks for posting! It’s neat to hear these stories. Glad you liked the post.
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This is a nice, sentimental post. Thanks too for the update on the house. Those city vs. country items are true, I know.
I’ve been absent for over a week now, I did post from the motel now and then but got way behind on my reading.
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What a nice post John. A lot of thinking went into that farmstead. Those flowers were just a small part of it. Nice memories.
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[...] we moved out to the farm where she and Grandpa Goerzen lived for decades, we noticed some flowers she had planted 30 years ago were still coming up, having withstood hail, hot summers, frost, [...]
It’s very touching.My eyes filled up with water’s,and thank you ..It helped me a lot….
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