“I bought the seeds ahead of time, Ray. They are already paid for. You don’t have to spend a dime of the savings. But you have to put them in the ground. If you don’t, they will rot, and you know how I hate waste.”

I stood there in the quiet shed, holding those yellow pages, and I realized how much love she had packed into that little green box.

She had carried that heavy secret all through the hot days of August and September, humming her little hymns while her body was failing, just to buy me a few more months of peace.

She had planned my survival while she was preparing to die.

I walked back to the house, carrying the green box under my arm like it was made of solid gold.

I went to her old sewing cabinet in the hallway, the one with the sticky bottom drawer I had avoided for months.

I pulled it open.

Inside, resting on top of her extra spools of green thread, was her old pair of leather gardening gloves. They were still molded to the shape of her hands, with dark dirt dried into the leather knuckles.

I picked them up and put them on. They were too small for me, the leather tight across my palms, but they felt warm.

I took her small hand shovel from the drawer, the one with the wooden handle she had wrapped in green electrical tape to keep from getting splinters.

I went back out to the garden.

I did not care about my slippers or my old cardigan. I got down on my knees in the dirt, and I started clearing away the dead, tangled vines of the past winter.

By three o’clock that afternoon, the north bed was clean. My hands were dirty, and my back was sore, but I felt lighter than I had in months.

My daughter Sarah drove up the gravel driveway around four. The door of her car slammed in the quiet afternoon, and she walked around the corner of the house.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

I was standing there in the middle of the yard, her mother’s green gloves on my hands, holding a tray of her early girl seedlings.

“Dad?” she said, her voice shaking just a little.

“The north bed needs some extra lime, Sarah,” I said, wiping my forehead with the back of my hand. “Your mother said so in her letter.”

Sarah did not say anything for a second and honestly that felt worse. Then her face softened, and she set her purse down on the grass.

She walked over and took the other side of the seedling tray. We worked until the sun went behind the neighbor’s garage, putting the small green plants into the warm earth.

My back was sore, and my knees were aching, but for the first time since October, the air in my lungs tasted clean.