I drove passed my great aunties old house a little while ago, it’s down a quiet cul-de-sac to it’s not somewhere I drove past by accident, but something compelled me to take the small detour down the familiar road.
We called her Auntie; she was a tenacious woman. Never married (she said she was asked a couple of times, but they were ‘too boring’) and never had any children. She was a headteacher, retired early and travelled a lot. You get the picture. She was born exactly one year to the very DAY after my grandma (I know right). They were polar opposites. My grandma had a family, and a quiet life filled with cooking from scratch and home made trifles. I loved them both dearly.
My Auntie’s favourite flowers were daffodils, she planted them in her front garden, and they sprang up every year lining the path to her front door. A yellow brick road of daffodils! We’d jump over them from the small brick wall onto the grass ‘mind the daffs!’ she’d cry frequently, although never with annoyance.
So, when I drove past the house and saw that the new owners (I say new, she died about 10 years ago now) had ripped them out and paved over them I let out an audible gasp. How could they? Why would they do such a thing?! I felt so sad that something so synonymous with my auntie had been erased, it was like they’d yanked them directly from my heart. (allow me to indulge on that last line, I am a poet after all). I reasoned that perhaps they’d kept something of hers in the back garden she had so lovingly tended to. But perhaps not, and sometime told me I was maybe better off not knowing.
I drove away feeling thoroughly deflated, sad that the last tangible reminder of my Auntie had gone. A few days later, I was walking around my own garden, it was new to us and was beginning to bloom. I spotted some of the familiar cheerful yellow faces peering back at me, I instantly thought of my Auntie and smiled. The daffodils didn’t have to be in their original spot/ have to be lining her garden path for me to remember her, that happened wherever and whenever I saw them. And now I had some in my own garden, one of which my son picked and put in a glass of water for me to take inside.
‘I’m here,’ she said, ‘I’m wherever the daffodils are.’