All Again

A Rememberance

Unsurprisingly, Jamie finds herself in her garden. It's the easiest place for her to exist alongside her thoughts, and she needs to water the plants anyway this morning.

She's always careful when lifting up leaves and moving around plants when watering them, but today she feels extra careful. With her full focus on each of her plants, on every movement performed by her body, it keeps her thoughts low.

Jamie stands as she waits for the watering can to fully fill, leaning over once it nears the top. The water begins to rise high enough and Jamie turns the hose off. She grabs the handle and walks off to the left side of the little greenhouse she has outside the back of her shop.

On the wall adjacent to the door, there are two standing shelves with rows of different flowers on them. Flowers were always Jamie's favorite to grow, and while it is early autumn, not her favorite flower season, Jamie still appreciates the little buds that sprinkle the leaves and branches. It's enough to bring joy upon her heart, even though she isn't supposed to be working today.

She hums a little tune to herself, crouching down to water the bottom row of flowers. Between the two shelves is a bucket full of shovels, flower tape, a pair of gloves—all of the basic gardening necessities. But also in there are packets of Jamie's favorite plants that she has and keeps year round. Flowers like chrysanthemums, irises, and...

The corner of a blue packet sticks out behind a trowel. Tape covers the ends, keeping it sealed until spring when Jamie will start these seeds in newspaper peat pots until they're ready for transfer. Jamie glances into the bucket and her eyes land again on the showing corner. She sighs heavily, already knowing which packet that is just by the heart scrawled in black sharpie on the tape.

Gingerly setting down the watering can, Jamie reaches inside and picks the packet of seeds up. Moonflower seeds; a personal favorite of Jamie's far before she met Dani, but then that love was heightened when Dani became like a moonflower in Jamie's life. And maybe Jamie should've stopped planting moonflowers after Dani passed, but that didn't feel right. She plants even more now every spring, and with every bloom, it reminds her of how worth loving Dani was, despite losing her.

Because those years were the best of her life.

She turns the packet over in her hands and smiles at the other heart drawn neatly on the back. Dani had been labeling packets one day during work while Jamie was out putting together arrangements and helping customers. And she must've drawn this heart because the next day, when Jamie was sifting through them, she found this one in particular and rolled her eyes. Yeah, rolled her eyes in the most adoration-soaked way possible.

So in turn, she drew a heart on the front. And next time Dani was taking things in and out of that bucket, she saw it. Dani didn't mention it or anything—Jamie only knows she saw it because, the next week Jamie was looking for seeds, the heart was filled in with sharpie.

Ever since then, Jamie is careful when ripping the tape and when putting new tape on it. She never covers up the original pieces of tape. And now when Jamie rests her thumb over the heart on the back gently, all she can think of is Dani sitting in here, helping Jamie out, and showing her love by placing pen to seed packet.

And in a funny kind of way, Jamie supposes she shows her love by placing seed to soil. It's that thought that causes her to linger ever slightly more than she would've before continuing to water the rest of her plants.

Once finished watering her flowers, she feels that weird feeling in the pit of her stomach again—that feeling like she's supposed to keep moving forward but can't. Like a huge magnet keeping her here, or a rope tied through her belly button, grounding her in this greenhouse. Jamie feels as if she's supposed to just do everything she just did again.