I originally thought this blog would be about Susan and our summer together as we gardened and watched the Wisconsin wildlife on our rural parcel. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September of 2017, and frankly, this was probably going to be our last summer together. The blog, too, would give me a means of processing this crazy rollercoaster of emotions I’ve been riding.

Life is full of Murphy’s moments, isn’t it? We’d traveled to Susan’s home in West Virginia where she saw family and friends. But we had to cut our trip short; she wasn’t feeling well. The morning after we returned home, we went to the University of Wisconsin Hospital’s emergency room. Susan was being treated in the Carbone Cancer Center at the UW Hospital. Wonderful people there; great care. Anyway, she was admitted to the hospital. She was in the right place. She had a stroke early the next morning.  Now, after two days in the neurological unit’s ICU and consulting with her oncologist, I find myself at her bedside in oncology’s palliative care unit.

We aren’t to get our last summer.

But, there is the garden. The larger whole is comprised of smaller plots. There is the vegetable garden: twelve 4X12 foot raised beds. Then there are three perennial plots, one of which is a rock garden Susan and I made by terracing field stone. Facing the deeper woods to the east, beneath cedar and poplar, woodland plants grow.

The garden needs caring for, and I’ll do it. I hope, too, it will care for me.