Grandpa’s Flowers

My Grandpa was remembered for a lot of things. He used to work for General Motors down in Pontiac years ago, about 60 years ago in fact. After that he worked for the county and he was well known by a lot of people for a lot of the helpful things he did. But there was one other thing he was known for: His flowers. Grandpa Hoot (named after Hoot Gibson, the old time movie star) always planted Gladiolus every year, and Irises that lined up like purple fence posts in his garden.

He also gave them away, to virtually everyone who came to his door. He would walk down the path from his house to ours, picking flowers as he traveled, so we would have a fresh bouquet of glads and irises for a centerpiece. It was Grandpa’s flowers that gave me my one and only look at a brand new Gladiola bloom as it slowly opened from a bud right before my eyes. I had never seen that miracle before, or since.

Grandpa always had the most beautiful glads and would search the flower catalogues for brand new colors year after year. When they were through blooming he would lovingly dig up the bulbs and store them away for the winter for re-planting in the spring. Grandpa’s flowers were hard work, but they were his love and hobby and they kept him from becoming an old man.

I can still see the white, yellow, pink, red, and peach colored blossoms standing on tall stalks waving in the breeze, like a greeting from Grandpa’s house to us. And alongside those blossoms, standing not quite as tall, but definitely as bright, the purple irises popping up here and there throughout. His vegetable garden was impressive enough by itself, but the real stars of the show were those flowers.

Then Grandpa died, and at his viewing there were hundreds of people, some of whom we had not ever met or had not seen in a very long time. The place was packed, as if he were a movie star or some type of celebrity like that. And the flowers were everywhere. It was amazing just how many gladiolus and irises were among the bouquets present at that funeral home that day. The top of his coffin was draped with the biggest spray of glads and irises I had ever seen in my life.

Those flowers from atop his coffin were given out, one by one, in his honor, doing what he would do, to each and every person present at the funeral home. They took them with silent tears in their eyes, and without bashfulness. I know what they were probably thinking: That the flower garden was going away forever now that he was gone.

And they were right, but only for a while. Now, a member of the family who had gone away for many years has returned and is planning to replant that flower garden, so next year it is entirely possible that the flowers will bloom again in Grandpa’s old garden. Glads and Irises of course. What else is there?