Chowder's Garden

Last October we lost our wonderful siamese cat, Chowder, after only having him for a year.
It was so rainy and dark.  Everything was stones and gravel and frozen dirt; and we had to burry him late at night, in the wet cold beginning of winter.
It was horribly sad.  Really unthinkably sad.
We still miss him; his eyes were the color of peacock plumes running toward me in the morning begging for breakfast.

In the week after he died, I found this paper sack of tulip and hyacinth bulbs that my mom had given me, shoved in the closet behind the summer sand toys.
Still trying to figure out how to deal with all the sadness of losing Chowder, Violet and I decided to plant a little garden for him.
So we went outside and sat in the dirt planting bulbs for an hour.
And it helped, just a little.

Well, it's spring now, and Chowder's garden has come into bloom!
It was hard to think, on that horrible stone cold October night that it ever could have happened.
You think life is gone, permanently, and then in the rosiest shade of rose, up it comes, and stands proud on the straightest green legs you've ever seen.
Your tulips, Chowder-- They look like flamingo eggs waving in the wind outside our window.  
We wave back.
They've made us happy.