Daily Cascade

In a Garden Forever

Prompt:
Write a short story using this quote as inspiration:
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”
Alfred Tennyson

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In a Garden Forever

Grace pushed the gate open, which greeted her with a welcoming creak. Here lay the garden, warming under the morning sun, its rows and rows of flowers stretching endlessly. It was as if the place itself bloomed with feeling.

She walked among the flowers inhaling their scents...roses, lilacs, lilies, carnations, and many others. She had planted each flower with care, one for every thought of him and for every moment she still missed him.

They had dreamt this together, this garden, as their dreams curled softly in their shared joy. He had said, often, “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you... I could walk through my garden forever.”

Then, he was taken away from her--suddenly without warning. So Grace started the planting on her own... one flower for each of his sweet words, one bush for each memory. And the garden grew like her grief.

And now, years later, she walked along the winding paths of the garden as the wind rustled through the tall flowers and a beautiful butterfly danced ahead of her. Now, old and tired, she sat on the stone bench under the wisteria and closed her eyes, feeling her garden pulse with life, a place that would always be alive.

"You did plant our garden, Grace, and it is stunning." It was his voice, no doubt about that! She smiled, as his voice caressed her, but she was unable to talk or to open her eyes.

"I came for you," he said. "To take you to the garden I planted for you...to a place where gardens never end."


Later that day, the next-door neighbor found Grace on the stone bench, under the arch of the wisteria, smiling, happier than ever, but lifeless.