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"Come on and go with me, you've got to see the hosta lady's gardens," my neighbor Jeff insisted. "You're already filthy from gardening, so it'll be perfect," he said jokingly. I climbed into his old Suburban. He drove to an old part of Papillion, Nebraska that I had never explored. "Here we are!" he exclaimed.
There emerged from the front screen door of the once-neat blue-and-white small ranch home a tiny figure. "Hey," she called, "Are you here to look at hostas?"
The spry little 68-year-old Scooty Maguire took us on a tour of her gardens, which comprised her entire yard; everywhere you looked there were different varieties of hosta; no grass could be seen. She pointed out this and that favorite as I watched in amazement. She recalled every plant's name as if it were a long-lost friend.
At this time I had only three or four hosta in my yard. Scooty's hostas intrigued me but not nearly so much as Scooty herself - something about her made me want to come back and visit. In a strange way she reminded me of my late adopted mom - something about her feisty attitude.
I stopped by one day and knocked on her door - she was surprised to see me again and wanted to know if I came back for hostas. "No, " I told her, "I just came back to visit with you if you don't mind!" She invited me in and showed me around her little home. It was obviously in a state of neglect and I soon learned why. She had lost her husband about a year before and soon after, she suddenly lost most of her vision. She had an adult son living with her who apparently did nothing to help her save an occasional trip to the grocery. For everything else she relied on Meals on Wheels and a couple of old friends who would drive her to the doctor and so forth.
I was amazed at her wonderful sense of humor! She cracked jokes and chain-smoked Eve 120's as we chatted. She told me that she was born and raised in the Red River Valley on the border of Texas and Oklahoma she lived on the Oklahoma side of the river in a tiny town. She showed me an old recipe book that the town's womenfolk had published back in the 1930's. What a treasure!
We shared a love of gardening, we read the same authors, loved to cook, and had many other common interests. It was difficult to break away, Scooty only letting me go when I promised to return.
Return I did, this time with my teenaged son, John, in tow. John's job was Mr. Fixit and he went straight to work clearing trash from the yard and house while I vacuumed and dusted, I visited her a couple of times a week. I would do up her few dishes, throw away the moldy food from uneaten delivered meals, and make sure her freezer was full of ice cubes for her beloved ice water. Her other essentials were dark Milky Way bars and the infamous Eve's. We kept her well supplied with both. Our friendship intensified along with the cold as fall drew into winter.
The following spring, she gave me a tremendous education held in a dirt classroom for weeks on end. She began to send "starts" home with me each time I visited. I accepted each one with great excitement. I was "hooked" - a hosta addict!
One late summer day, Scooty told me her oldest son in Lincoln, Nebraska wanted her to move to a retirement home. She was terrified that when her house was sold, the new owners would mow down all the hosta. I tried to assure her that no one would ever do that to such a splendid display, but she was insistent. She asked me to take care of all her "babies" for her. My son and I moved over 300 hosta plants from her gardens to my yard. It was a labor of love, creating new flower beds to hold all the newcomers.
In October, the son and his friend showed up with a U-Haul truck and began taking apart Scooty's "dying house," as she liked to call it, reflecting her wish that she stay there until she died. Furniture was carried past as I gave her a haircut on her front porch. I gave her a pair of red earrings, her favorite color and put makeup on her to "fix her up" to meet her new prospective friends.
All the while, my heart was breaking. I could not imagine giving up a cherished home of more than 30 years, leaving all the hundreds of plants purchased one at a time and babied so much. She sent all her mystery novels with me, more than 200 of them. It was just... everything that was Scooty, vanished. I could not imagine her sadness.
Worst of all, she was deathly afraid. With her limited vision, she could not even see to find her apartment and mailbox at the new place. I drove there two days after she moved and helped her to organize her new apartment. I walked her around and showed her where the football game would be on TV that evening in the recreation room. I found her cat, which had been hiding in the closet. I unpacked boxes and made her a huge-print directory of everyone's phone number, including mine.
I left, feeling she was in as good shape as possible under the circumstances. Her son promised me he would keep me posted about her by email. I cried all the way home. WHY would they not put her in an assisted living facility, I wondered. This retirement apartment had no assistance whatsoever. I told my husband, "I give her six months there."
As the winter wore on, I struggled with a chronic illness and had a bad time of it. It seemed I was never up to making the fifty mile trip to visit her. I felt terrible about it and worried about her all the time. I sent emails to her son and they went unanswered.
Finally, in April, I just had to talk to Scoot. I dialed her number and found it was disconnected. As it turned out, she had spent the past two months in the tiny cemetery three blocks from my house. I went and found her and cried all over again.
There is a hosta named "Scooter." A hosta buddy in New York sent me the Scooter hosta to plant on her grave in her honor.
This summer, the hosta bloomed in force in my yard, stretching their bloom stalks skyward as though to say, "Look Mom, we made it!' I drove past Scooty's old yard this summer, and to my dismay the new owners had bulldozed the entire yard and planted grass.
I can never pay a tribute high enough to honor this brave little woman just an ordinary woman raising an ordinary family in an ordinary small town but a woman whose friendship enriched my life forever.
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