Woody's Garden

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There Must Be Gardens in Pet Heaven
I am at Lowe’s Garden Center, wrestling with a Bird of Paradise. I just want to find the price. This Mutha is huge.
Woody’s headstone arrived and I’ve decided to plant the biggest, most beautiful tropical plants I can find around it. Woody may have been small, but I just know he is huge now. After all, he is in everything I see.
Plus I need something to water and tend to every day or I am going to lose my mind. Rebecca is low maintenance; I love her, especially now as she shares my grief, but she’s an independent kinda gal, as most cats are.
The Bird of Paradise is ninety dollars, plus it won’t fit in my car, so I chose a smaller version called heliconia: same huge green leaves and smaller, but no less beautiful, orange flowers. I set the pot of Confederate Jasmine we brought with us from North Carolina next to his headstone, as sort of a connection to when he was alive. I also buy a yellow flowering shrub called Esperanza, which means “Hope” and a Kalanchoe plant with teeny white flowers on it, because they remind me of Woody. The last thing I buy is some kind of snake plant with brilliant red and orange and yellow-speckled leaves reaching up to the sky, much like the flowers and plants in my niece and nephew’s card.
I have finally changed my clothes. No laundry done yet, though. Change takes time.
I drive home in a stupor - again, change takes time – and I go to work.
To call me “crazy with grief” at this point is an understatement. Even though it is 90 degrees and sunny, I dig the holes for the plants and plant them in fifteen minutes flat, even adding soil conditioner to keep them healthy. Bugs are everywhere: attaching themselves to my arms and calves, flying up my nose, even sticking onto my contact lenses. Undaunted, I weed as I go, all while balancing on one foot so as not to disturb his gravesite. The finishing touch is a little wooden sign I made with a little drawing of Woody on a cloud on it that read, “Woody’s Garden.” No way I’m going to call this spot in my yard “Woody’s G-G-G-Gr-Grave.” Uh-uh, no way.
As I water the plants, I keep hoping I’ll see Woody peek out from behind one of the plants in his garden. Wacko.
Rebecca appears next to me and suddenly leaps over to the heliconia. She rubs past one. She sniffs Woody’s new headstone and plops down on it.
She closes her eyes as I pet her head.
I think of my niece and nephews’ card. “Angels and bugs….” I whisper.
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