In April of 2025, we sold our larger house of more than twenty years, downsized, and moved to a smaller, single-story home in the country. My spouse and I felt like we had found our forever home—one with no stairs, a large yard, a barn I began wiring and converting into a woodworking shop, and quietude. Lots of quiet, punctuated throughout the day by varieties of birdsong.
This, we frequently marveled together, was our haven. Empty nesters for the first time in our marriage, we found a place to deepen, to grow older together, and to nurture our own personal interests and passions.
I was looking forward to landscaping our new surroundings, planting the irises I have been cultivating for years, incorporating other flowering plants, and setting raised beds for vegetables. I am happy, if not spiritually contented, when I have my hands in the dirt, making space for flowers and vegetables to grow, and then tending the green growing things through their seasons. In this, I am like my mother and her mother as well.
Initially, I got off to a good start. I began planting my beloved irises, a few hostas, and some beautiful pink wood sorrel. Along the way, I started landscaping around the backyard porch. As the year passed, however, my ability to create new gardens, plant them, and nurture them was curtailed by the late-stage lung cancer my doctors discovered while searching for something else. With an uncertain future ahead of us, we consulted with newly assigned cancer specialists and set a date to begin treatment.
Knowing I was facing a so-far relentless foe—one that had been eating me alive, slowly draining the life out of me—I girded the tender threads of my resolve and committed myself to doing everything I could do to keep living-on. And at the same time, together, my partner and I hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. In our hopefulness, we vowed to make the most of our time together, looking for and sharing even the smallest of joys in a given day.
Like, Carolina chickadees sharing space at feeders. Various species of woodpeckers. Occasional blue birds. Deer. The colors of sundown. Hummingbirds at dusk. Rabbits eating clover blooms. Swarms of fireflies. Glimpses of the sacred passing by. Time together, just the two of us. Preparing meals together. Holding hands. These and more, the gifts of a given day.
And so, in April of this year, before my first round of chemo and immunotherapy, we took our annual Spring drive to the Walmart. We hoped to find some bargains on flowering plants—almost always, we can find neglected plants that need immediate transplanting or repotting on sale. And almost always, I can love and nurse neglected plants back to life.
As we wandered around the garden shop, I was taken with a batch of good-sized plants with bright red petals and yellow stigmas on the female blooms. In the past, I had never paid much attention to begonias, but these spoke to me. Examining the plants in a few pots more closely, I was impressed by how tenaciously they clung to life despite being dangerously dry and root bound.
I wasn’t sure those begonias could hang on much longer. Still, something nudged me into buying them, so I put them in our cart and brought them home alongside some petunias and other plants in desperate need of water, room to grow roots, and a good dose of divine intervention. Even as I struggled with the adverse effects of my cancer, over a few days I transplanted our rescued flowers.
Because we live in North Carolina, the soil consists mostly of red clay; therefore, growing plants and vegetables requires creativity, intentional attention to the soil, careful placement, and a fair amount of luck. In response, I tend to employ large containers, small planting beds enriched by organic materials and time, and raised beds, which are also created using my own concoction of dirt. Said another way, I enliven native red clay with mixtures of topsoil, potting soil, and organic garden soil, along with green and brown matter gathered throughout the season. I keep these mixtures in the same bins I mix the dirt in and store them in our barn.
At home with our bargain plants, I poured my dirt mixture into a large container and planted the neglected begonias. Unconvinced they would survive, I watered them attentively, talked to them, and prayerfully nudged them along.
The big begonia planter sits at the corner of our driveway and the walkway to the front door. From the bay window in our breakfast nook, I can see the begonias in their new habitat. Since we moved in, I cultivated the habit of sitting at the window every morning, eating breakfast, watching the various birds that eat at our feeders and trees and drink nectar from Rose of Sharon blooms, all the while chirping and singing as they come and go.
Throughout the course of my combined chemo-immunotherapy, this practice became increasingly important to me. It was spiritually grounding—a time to just be present with all that was present to me. Over time, my partner joined. Eventually, we were both eating breakfast and lunch at the window—often, together.
From April—after transplanting our rescued plants—through June, I received infusions of chemotherapy and targeted immunotherapy every 21 days. From the beginning, I was resolved to be as stubborn and resilient as my grandmother, my mother, and my uncle before me, and as hard to kill as I had been my whole life, surviving traumas, relentless bullying, and bouts of suicidality. And as is the case for so many of us, throughout my treatment I struggled with the effects of an aggressively active tumor and the treatments designed to shrink it.
Yet each new day, I got up and made my way through raw will, determination to get on with my life, and a fragile, persistent hope. And every morning, without fail, whatever time it was when I finally sat down for breakfast, amid birdsong and flurries of butterflies, the begonias were there. Each day, I watched them living-on, and eventually, thriving.
Time passed. Despite some close calls, I completed my scheduled infusions and consulted again with my surgeon. We feared that continued weight loss, the injury to my kidneys we were finally resolving, and continued anemia would render me a poor candidate for the one hope of a cure. Surprisingly, and to our great relief, my surgeon felt I was still a good candidate.
Because I needed to be free of any residual chemo before surgery, it was August when I went into the hospital for a lobectomy to remove the tumor and the upper lobe of my left lung that housed it. I spent six days in the hospital before I was released to begin the long process of recovery at home. When we pulled into the driveway, the big black planter full of bright red begonias greeted me.
As I recover and have a little more energy, I eat my breakfast every morning at the bay window, which continues to be my practice. Not only to watch the birds and listen to them singing and chirping, but also to take in the beauty of those once root-bound, frail, and nearly-dying begonias. Each day that the weather allows, I take at least one short walk up and down the driveway. When I go out, I tend to the begonias. Often, I sit in one of our resin Adirondack chairs near the planter and marvel at the growth of those plants.
It gives me joy.
Recently as I ate my breakfast, it occurred to me that, perhaps, there is a reason I was so moved to bring those dying begonias home and try to nurture them back to health. As strange as it seems, I can’t escape the idea that the begonias and I are connected in some way—if only by circumstance, timing, and the symbology-seeking workings of my own mind.
Over the past few months, I have watched the fragile plants come back from the almost-dead. I bore witness as they survived early drought conditions, followed by days and days at a time of pounding rain that should have drowned them, only to be relieved just as dangerously by temperatures in the 90s for days on end before another bout of storms. And yet, those resilient begonias not only survived, they grew. They are still growing.
They have persisted alongside me as I have made my way—somewhat miraculously, I might add—through the most difficult experience of my life. It could be said, I came back from my own almost-dead. That interloper of a tumor was definitely killing me by the time my doctors found it. And there were times throughout my treatment where my survival was not guaranteed and, truthfully, not expected. To draw an analogy, I have survived my own droughts and storms. Still, I am here, not completely out of the woods yet, but I can see the sunlight through the trees.
I nonetheless live-on. I persist. Just like those bright red, once nearly-dead begonias.
These days, I think those begonias and I are the same: we are hard to kill. And, what a miracle that is. For each of us.
❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
I love you, friend.