Plant by the Window

If I were to die unexpectedly and others, perhaps family, came to gather my personal effects, among them they would find a potted plant by a window. Set in a Spanish-flared pot of bright yellow to red-orange, the plant, a zamioculcas zamifolia, would appear as nothing more than simple window decoration. Yet, unlike mementos or photographs where meaning is automatically ascribed, the gatherers wouldn’t perceive its true significance. And so, being collected and removed as with pots and pans and clothes and shoes and books and papers, though perhaps given a second home elsewhere, its meaning would become lost to time.

As people age their worlds recede. Friends fade or pass away. Children grow and go out into the world. A lifetime’s career ends as a historical footnote. In all these things and more, a collection of objects, usually small—photo albums, letters, old toys, various trinkets, maybe a few awards and medals—take their place in the home as symbols and reminders of things past.

And so, by one of my windows there rests a potted plant. Seeing it or tending to it, I am reminded of someone very special. Someone who knows as well how it came to be there. Together, we would run the gamut—and gauntlet—of emotions. But then, as if the plant had been collected and taken away, she was gone too.