Rescued Poinsettia plant takes root in husband’s undying love
It’s the kind of love you root for.
You know that top notch person you adore who just hasn’t found her person?
That was the story with an old friend and work colleague of mine.
The beauty of social media as we lived in different cities and took different career paths meant I could follow along as she found love later in life.
This friend’s new husband clearly adored her. That was evident from the photos and adventures she shared.
There was just this one thing
What wasn’t as shared was that this husband had a thing.
Don’t we all?
His was a history of rescuing items from the apartment building’s garbage.
Dumpster diving, if you will.
There was the pasta cooker, the rolling igloo cooler, a few kitchen knives.
He couldn’t believe the treasures people were tossing!
Did Friend see the same value?
Absolutely not.
But she could accept that this was the way this incredible man loved. How he loved her. How he loved the world.
There were limits to her appreciation.
A Christmas surprise
I told him, ‘I don’t want this plant. Do not bring it home.’
“The first Christmas we were married,” Friend reminisced with me the other day, “he saw a poinsettia plant in the garbage room and asked me to come look at it. It was a sad little plant without a single flower left on it. I knew he had big rescue plans already cooking up in his head. I was clear. I told him, ‘I don’t want this plant. Do not bring it home.’
I went to work. When I got home, it was sitting on our kitchen counter.’”
They would have laughed about that plant for years.
If tragedy had not struck.
Six months after they were married, Friend’s husband died of a massive heart attack. It was as if this heart that loved so big simply ran out of juice.
In her grief, Friend packed up her life and moved back to her hometown.
A chance to move on
She could’ve left the poinsettia plant behind. She couldn’t bear the thought. Besides, it probably wouldn’t last long without her husband’s TLC to keep it going.
That plant has been by her side for the last couple of years.
It refuses to die.
Friend recently took a big job up in New York.
One look at the still-living plant and she knew it was coming, too.
It hasn’t bloomed once since her husband rescued it from the dumpster. But it now, at least has earned a name.
“My family calls it, ‘The Plant.’It’s taken on a life of its own.”
A legend with a purpose
“I know he’s laughing,” Friend shared, thinking of her husband in heaven.
After a long time of grief and sadness, she’s laughing, too.
She now knows what she could’ve never known that day in the basement.
People toss treasures.
Bodies wear out.
But true love, like that darned plant, never dies.
That’s what her husband has been showing her all along.
What a treasure, indeed.
While you’re here…
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