When Sean and I explored the cemeteries at Fairmount Memorial Park a few months ago, we saw dozens of beautiful old headstones and monuments dating back centuries, lovingly carved with intricate motifs. Each one was a masterpiece, a testament to a family’s love and grief, but it was this simple marker that captured my heart. The dried husks of once-vibrant flowers arranged in the plain glass jar, slowly beginning to molder in the damp autumn weather,  spoke more eloquently of love and loss than the most stunning mausoleum. So many people leave artificial flowers for their departed–even my father’s grave rarely sees a living bouquet–and I understand it, the desire to leave something that will not die, that will remain pretty and colorful for months on end. But even in their decay, these gathered flowers were so beautiful, so powerful and evocative in their beauty. The bouquet had a handpicked look to me, and even though there aren’t many wildflowers here in Spokane, it reminded me of my family’s tradition of going bluebonnet hunting in the spring, the wildflowers that streaked the Texas hill country with vivid color, and how that tradition died with my father. But this April I am going home, the first spring I will spend in Austin in 6 years, and I will drive the old country roads of my childhood, gathering Indian paintbrush and winecup and queen anne’s lace and primrose, to lay at his stone.

 

Hill Country

for my father

 

I will never forget

 

Endless oceans of living color:

blue, white, yellow, red

the lake, the dam, the cove no one else can find

where the flowers bloom in colors

as bright as your life

You did everything for us—

stabbing your fingers to bring me a prickly poppy,

searching endlessly for wine cups, my

favorite flower

—a guidebook to Texas wildflowers, a picnic

on the hillside that changes color

each year, first white poppies, now purple verbena

You did

everything for us

 

How do I tell you, now

that you’re gone,

how much it meant to me?

How do I tell you

April is my favorite month and I miss

this hillcountry spring

almost as much as I miss you?

 

I tried to disown it all my life,

these gentle rolling hills, but

you made me love it.

 

How do I

tell you now

the bluebonnet is my favorite flower?

 

You did

everything

for us.