She would chitchat with every bush, vine, and tree as if they were her comadres.
Nature Heals
Auntie Mel had always been the soul of any party. Her energetic personality and her natural gift for words made her a favorite among family and friends for more than six decades. She had many other gifts. She was generous beyond people’s desert, she was strong beyond physical measures, and she was optimistic beyond logic. She also loved nature and developed an unusual affinity with plants. Her empathy for plants led her to talk to them as she would with people.
Aunt Mel would religiously walk the gardens of her apartment complex twice a day and chitchat with every bush, vine, and tree as if they were her comadres. Her high-pitch voice was the most melodious and easily recognizable voice in the whole neighborhood, one that could make anyone change their mood every time.
Thus, when Auntie Mel’s family and friends saw her pale yellowish countenance uttering words of defeat after the second surgery to fix her post-bladder removal problems failed, they were shock beyond despair.
At her age, the chances of surviving a third surgery were slim. Any procedure to create a new Ileal conduit would be experimental and the local doctors were not very optimistic about their skills to try experimental surgery or the old patient’s capacity to recover. She begged her family to let her be. She had lived a full, virtuous, and graceful life.
Respecting the will of a loved one can be a tricky commitment. Some promises are hard to keep. Auntie Mel’s absence from the garden was noticeable not just in the silence that now lurked around, but also in the mysterious changes the plants were experimenting.
One day, Auntie Mel asked to be taken to the garden. She wanted to say good bye to her beloved plants. She walked around the square with slower steps and talked to them in murmurs. She stopped at a mango tree around which a dying vine seemed to reflect her own decay. She embraced the tree and cried. Suddenly, a struggling sprout wrapped around her right hand small finger. Auntie Mel felt an unusual spur of energy from the very roots of the tree and every other living organism in that garden.
She felt to her knees, cried some more, and left the garden laughing. When asked, her friends and family agreed that Auntie Mel’s recovery was nothing short of a miracle. If you ask her, though, she will say the garden was not ready to let her go and just lent her some of their never ending life.
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