The Last Bloom
People develop attachments to things: objects, places, people, pets… and plants. Sometimes unawares.
RIP, little cactus.
I didn’t really think much about the attachment I’d formed to this plant until it finally died.
I posted a photo of its last, oddly-timed bloom on Facebook with an RIP msg. The response was substantial. I had no idea so many folks felt as I, a strong attachment to a houseplant, many of them also Christmas cacti, often a last relic of a deceased parent or family member or just a steadfast companion in the drive along the bumpy road of a young life.
I had lived with mine for 21 years. It had survived root rot; growing back after a cleaning and removal of infected parts and a repotting.
And it had survived me, with all of my ups and downs.
It was a start from a plant that had been my great, great grandmother’s; a woman of Danish and English heritage beloved by the entire family for her warmth and strength. I often wished I could have known her.
My mother gave me the little plant start when I was at a crossroads — I had just left a tumultuous relationship and was striking out on my own. She helped me find my own apartment, and it had been a housewarming gift.
Christmas cacti live a long time and pretty much take care of themselves, but you do have to water them — at least once in awhile. But if you forget sometimes, they tend to be forgiving.
When I was growing up, my mother had been notorious for killing plants. Through her own tumultuous times, she possessed a tendency to be neglectful — of her house, her husband, her children, her plants, herself.
In my teens, when I struggled hard with severe depression, my mother in a seeming effort to understand, refused to acknowledge that she herself had ever experienced depression. But I knew better; I knew where in the mirror she refused to look; knew every subtle detail she changed in the stories of her past.
Sometimes, in a family, the unwieldy items get passed along when we aren’t sure how to deal with them; an inheritance without a back story, a pain without a name. It took me years to root back to the source of much of the pain I’d inherited.
Now, voicing her regret for past wrongs, on her knees she scrubbed my new kitchen cabinets — really going out of her way to make amends. Grateful, but awkward; I felt all of this was unnecessary. In some way, she was taking responsibility for my current misfortune. Maybe in some ways, she had aided in getting me into that pickle, but I was an adult now, and this was my life, and my own bad decisions. I said so. And I forgave her. Parents are not perfect. I saw her as a whole person, as someone who had lived through so much, who had weathered many a disaster. How could I judge her? Hold her responsible? We had been good friends before, and I wanted us to be friendly and close again. It was up to me to change this story thread in my own time.
The plant was enough to get me to do something mindful on a regular basis, and a constant reminder when I did, that I was part of something greater — that I too was a living thing that required nurturing, and also that I was part of a family, a continuum. I took it as a subtle reminder from the woman who gave birth to me that I needed to care better for myself. Better than I had been, better than she had, better than she had taken of herself.
Over the years, my inherited cactus flourished and bloomed regularly around the holidays. Then it went for a spell when it didn’t bloom. I repotted it and learned more about its needs: regular spells of natural light and complete darkness. (Something I discovered I needed myself for my own brain health. Only in my case, I had had to live outside for three months to make that discovery.)
Years later, after my mother succumbed to cancer, the plant became all the more special — a last bastion of her life’s energy passed onto me, announcing itself every year around Christmastime, blooming as if in celebration of the cyclic nature of life, and perhaps as a gentle reminder that she lives on in me.
On the 21st year of its life, it bloomed — just a few blooms — in the early summer. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but took it that either it was very happy, or approaching death. A few months later, it wilted badly, and nothing — not repotting or pruning or drying or new soil or change of location could encourage its recovery.
I finally gave it up and let it go.
But I think both initial thoughts I had when it bloomed out of season, one last time, had been correct. Yes, it was now ready to die. But also, it was, in its last moments, a very happy plant.