The House That Forgot

Once there was a flower garden where now tall crab grass chokes the life from the roses, daisies and hibiscus that struggle—mostly unsuccessfully—to survive. The hardy weeds that had tried so valiantly for decades to overpower the delicate blooms have finally been given the freedom they craved.

A small house stood sentinel over the former garden, not aware that it had grown as decrepit as the small patch of soil it protected. A house with Alzheimer's, it had forgotten its former beauty. The roof sagged in spots, was nonexistent in others. Much of the ceiling had become rubble on the dusty floor. Bits of paint from summers long past, when the house had been loved, clung with unwitting resilience to weathered boards.

The old woman, Daisy, who had once lived there, had been gone longer than the house could remember—when flashes of remembrance were had. She wandered away one day, forgetting her name, lost to the memory of a house she had once tended so lovingly or the garden that brought her unremembered joy. A kindly neighbor had discovered her in his barn and safely delivered her into the hands of the proper authorities—welfare workers who made the lost woman comfortable in the extended care unit at County Hills Hospital. No relatives were left to gain the land that supported the bereft house and weed-choked garden.

The neighbor who rescued her stood outside on the porch nervously chewing the tip of his pipe while his wife picked through the old woman's raggedly belongings. She moved framed pictures on dusty end tables to the old fashioned suitcase she'd found in the attic and left a threadbare pink housecoat and muddy slippers next to the unmade bed. A spider scrambled out of the dresser drawer as the neighbor pulled it open. She pulled her hand back quickly, not knowing if it was a recluse spider that would bite in a panic and leave her a hapless victim left to suffer the dreaded flesh eating disease, or a typical house spider that was as common to country living as crops and vegetable gardens. With brisk movements, she dropped items of clothing into the suitcase. She moved more quickly than she would have liked, but the stench from the kitchen was beginning to overpower the house as afternoon sun filtered through streaky windows. The house groaned as she walked across the unwashed floorboards. Without a backward glance, she hurried to the porch, handed the suitcase to her husband, and hurried to the familiarity of the truck. The house creaked as though coughing at the dust trail left by the truck as it bounced along the rutted road. They were as eager to forget the house as quickly as the house had already forgotten them.

No farmers sought to buy the land that would be costly in reclamation, especially, said some, when one considered how overworked the land had been for so many years. And worse yet, said others, how many years other parts of the land had lain fallow; boulders and pebbles that no one had the time or inclination to be concerned with promised back-breaking labor. There wasn't really enough land to warrant an immediate auction. Perhaps in less successful years, one or two farmers might one day be desperate enough to take on the overwhelming task of making something out of nothing.

Time worked methodically so the stairs rotted, leading only to a yawning hole where the door had been. Weeds and tall grass grew up through the gaps in the withered porch. Yet if someone took the time to walk through the treacherous, rodent-filled grasses, around to the back gate, pushed hard against the rusted lock and pulled back the tall grass where the flower garden once grew, one could still find daisies.

Daisies are flowers that are too pretty to know they're weeds despite their ability to grow like them. Daisies stand tall and proud, not suspecting for a moment they don't belong. Like the old woman, before death left her alone in an unvisited grave, all the pieces of her former life forgot what they were or why they existed and so they did for lack of knowing any better.