I’m writing today with my nose in a gardenia.
My aunt picked this lovely flower for me from a bush by her home, little knowing it’s a ticket straight back to the hot August afternoon I became a Wilson. Burying my nose in it triggers picture after picture in my mind’s eye.
We had planned for this day for months. Researched options, wrote lists, juggled errands. Rewrote lists and pressed on. But when my wedding day arrived and Dad walked me down the aisle (delayed ten minutes because the CAR WOULDN’T START), the enduring beauty was not found in the particulars of our tuxes and dresses, flowers and feasting, music and dancing. Rather, it was in the solemn vows made before God and loved ones, affirming the intrinsic value of God’s design for marriage and family. We were sent out with prayer, love and no small supply of Tupperware, all of which kept us going for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death would us part.
The gardenia by my side tonight has changed appearance since my aunt first clipped it and handed it to me. At the first, it was pristine and fresh, with cool, smooth petals, spicy-sweet fragrance, and dotted with dew. Mm-mm.
The flower doesn’t look that way now, having traveled in my suitcase from Florida to Pennsylvania. But I still like having it around. Though its leaves are tinged with brown, and it’s droopy from the handling it’s endured, it reminds me of the love of a specific person in a specific time and place.
Like this gardenia, Jack and I changed appearance over the years, starting with the day I carried that bridal bouquet to stand by his side. Some of it, honestly, was a clear improvement. No one misses his leisure suits or my Catwoman glasses. We earned a number of battle scars along the way — splinters, gray hairs, calloused hands — but I can tell you this truly: at the end of it all, when our life together came to an unforeseen halt, life was still spicy-sweet with that man.
August 14, 1976 we took our vows before God and loving witnesses to love one another through the stuff of life until death would us part, whenever that might be. We were dressed in our best. We laughed and danced. As we opened presents and embraced settling into a place of our own, it was a time to dream dreams and ponder possibilities. We knew our promises were for life, and I suppose we thought that life would extend forever.
Of course it couldn’t. When I kissed my husband for the last time and walked away from all that Had Been to what would Now Be…when I walked out of the door, out of his hospital room, into our car and back to the home we would no longer share, I was surprised and grateful at the sudden realization we had kept our vows to the very, very end. Though there were plenty of hard times, times we both wanted to quit, in the end the vows we took were the vows we kept. Which proved to be yet another kind of beauty.
Loving a person just the way they are is no small thing…
Let’s find out the beauty of seeing things through.
Sara Groves, “Loving A Person”, Add To The Beauty, 2005
This gardenia reminds me of that. There is the beauty of embarking, and another of seeing things through. After the party clothes no longer fit, and the refreshments have all been eaten, and the gifts have all been put to use, there comes the sheer keeping of your word. Which is beauty-full..