Member-only story
Rolling thunder overhead…
Brought back heartfelt memories!
Quite unexpected things sometimes happen. And although this fleeting event was entirely personal to me, and it has only happened once, I thought to relate it anyway because on reflection it was rather strange.
I’d been to the local cemetery that morning — not just because it was a Thursday market day and Monsieur Chasselay always had freshly-cut flowers for sale on the pavement bordering the square — but because it had been unseasonably hot and dry for ten days and the flowers and plants on my wife’s grave needed extra watering.
I thought to buy a nice bunch of bright yellow, cream and white daffodils because they usually lasted for a good week and always looked so fresh, but they were more or less over for that year. Before I’d made a decision on whether to buy his cut tulips, the old man handed me a potted Wallflower, which was just coming into bloom, as a gift for my late wife. He’d been giving her the occasional bunch of flowers from when we moved into town in several years before, sometimes coming around to our house with an offering even if I hadn’t visited the market that day!
It was also different than usual because one year before, to the very day, I was being flown by helicopter to reputedly the best heart hospital in France (outside Paris that is) in a comatose state, being kept…
