They’re Never Really Gone

By Nathan Retherford

Mother woke me up at about 8 AM to check on the garden, she had her thin green plastic gloves on, and her sun hat that frayed slightly at the edges, and she had a smile that said Have I got an adventure for you today Darcy. We went to the flowerbed right beside the front door and there was an eyestalk growing from the ground. It was Great Aunt Leontine’s (and I know it was hers because it kept searching the window for the little trays of cookies she would leave out, and my brother and I would steal, when he still lived here). I had no idea who buried her there, but Mother seemed pretty content and fed it and the veins along its side sort of convulsed in a seemingly pleased way when she did. This is probably because my uncle who lives in South Dakota planted Grandpa and last Christmas he sent us a card with a photo of a leg squirming out of the earth with the caption “Me and the Old Man, still kicking!”.

That night after everyone went to sleep I had to look out my bedroom window and Leontine’s eyestalk had grown out maybe another quarter of an inch and was peering around the front of the house in a very lumbering way. I saw the tips of her manicured fingers wriggling slightly in the dirt and I guess it really is like Mother said, that they’re never really gone.

By the next week, when I had to go back to school (it was Christmas break, and when I asked Mother why we planted Leontine in the winter she said a woman as strong as her could grow any time of the year) her hand had shot out of the ground enough to wave goodbye as I got on the school bus, and sometimes Mother would show her my homework and spelling bee awards and get those signs of positive reaffirmation and she would say Darcy Dear, I am so proud of you. And for a while, piece by piece, Leontine was there, her nose took root not too far from the window and we would let her smell the casseroles and pies and other things we made and her eye would dilate as if to say Thank you.  

But one day I came home from school and I got off of the bus and Mother was there, crying, and Father was holding the weed-eater behind him, and the whole front of the house was covered in little specks and splatters of blood. I tried to ask what happened but it was pretty clear that there was no getting Great Aunt Leontine back now, and that tomorrow they were going to come with a big backhoe and put her somewhere else. Somewhere she could Rest In Peace.