When I was growing up, my maternal grandmother’s small country home in South Dakota was surrounded by a huge row of lilacs. Unlike here in the south where we are blessed with a panoply of beautiful flowering bushes, lilacs are about the only bush that can survive the harsh prairie winters. Each spring, Grandmother’s bushes would go wild, throwing shoots in every direction with abandon and then putting on a fantastic display of fragrant, lavender blooms. It always cheered my mother wonderfully to see these; and mother, widowed at a young age with four children, often needed cheering. Especially if we were visiting grandmother and grandfather. That is where she went when things were desperate; to get her lecture of how she could have chosen to marry a healthier man, followed by loving, sacrificial help, comfort, gentle advice, and solace.
Somehow, with two, sometimes three minimum wage jobs, and a grit and determination her children were unable to fully appreciate at the time, she kept our family of five fed, clothed, housed, schooled, and churched. The only thing she ever failed to provide was discipline. She had neither the heart nor the energy for it. Just once, when my sister and I, the oldest, had stretched her beyond reason did she grab for the broom. She sobbed while performing her unwanted duty. And my sister and I sobbed late into the night, embarrassed and ashamed, vowing to never let her down again.
When I moved to Winston-Salem following a tortuous sojourn through medical training and a side road or two that took me far from the Dakotas, there were five scraggly bushes along the south side of our new home. For nearly a year they failed to perk up and I contemplated tearing them out, but was too busy striving to establish myself in my new position. So I decided to give them a reprieve and see how they did in the spring.
In spring, as a birthday present, I flew Mom out to visit us. One morning she walked the perimeter of our house, inspecting each new and interesting plant and bush, many foreign to her. To my great surprise, she came in bearing a lilac spray. “Where on earth did you get that”, I asked? “Why, you have five nice lilac bushes there in back!” With a little nurturing, the lilacs became my prize. They reminded me of Mom, as if she was always there visiting me. Lilacs are unusual bushes. They require adversity, in the form of at least one hard freeze each winter, in order to bloom the following spring. Recalling our family’s hardscrabble years, the comparison was obvious.
Despite my feeble and desperate efforts to doctor from a distance, Mom got sick and slipped away from us, one organ system at a time, beginning with the one to which I’d dedicated my career, the heart. Her four offspring were adrift; stunned by how much we missed her, embarrassed by how much we had relied upon her even as adults, and guilt-ridden at how little of her precious caring we’d managed to return to her.
We had a horrible drought that year and the biggest, thickest old lilac bush became a barren twig. I pampered and pruned to coax it back to life, but to no avail. At last, I reluctantly removed its dried out, lifeless body, and concentrated my efforts on the remaining four bushes. In the meantime, I fielded numerous calls for help from my siblings, realizing that we all shared a common plight, and that I was now the designated family nurturer, struggling to fill a profound void. With time, we all began to find our new footings, and to cautiously flourish. The following spring, on Mom’s birthday, the four remaining lilac bushes burst forth in fragrant blooms. Mom’s work was finally done.
© Dalane W. Kitzman