Who, being loved, is poor?
Oscar Wilde
My friend, Bill died just after the Ides of March. He was an unlikely philanthropist. He didn’t possess much besides his horses. But for sixteen years, he had me work on them—first on Huandoy, his sweet, aged Peruvian Paso and then on Jake, his magnificent, comical Friesian. For sixteen years, Bill was the one who pressed two twenty dollar bills into my palm every week. During that time, whenever I opened my wallet, I never felt without. I always had cash to stop for a cookie at the Cornucopia or pump some gas or pick up a bunch of bananas.
Bill was a philosopher. He and I could theorise and speculate till the proverbial cows came home—even after cancer made off with his voice. I am fairly good at reading lips. And he tried to learn a bit of sign language. I seemed to be able to understand him when others couldn’t. And he understood me pretty well, too.
Bill was an herbalist. Many seasons ago, he gifted me a comfrey plant. It’s still in the original equine joint supplement bucket that Bill handed over to me one bright summer day. Every autumn, the comfrey dies back completely and then returns with the winter rains in a flourish of velvety, bright green leaves and long slim shoots capped with deep lilac-pink flowers.
Bill was an artist. After he lost his speech, he found he was eligible to collect disability. He bought a Nikon camera and took digital photography classes at the community college. His favourite subjects were hawks, horses, dogs, roses, clouds, ocean waves and women.
Bill was a romantic. A few years ago, he fell shamelessly in love. I knew it would probably not end up well, but still, I was happy for him. There he was on the cusp of late middle age, acting like a reckless, hormone-driven seventeen-year-old. At a time when he could have felt shriveled and dried up with the inevitable coming of old age, he was wildly snapping photographs and scribbling poetry to his beloved and dreaming about the child he would have with her. The relationship did not develop in the way that Bill imagined and the baby was not to be, but last spring, Bill’s grandson and namesake was born.
This past February, we were left as parched as we have been in Northern California since the time of the Civil War. In the middle of March, Bill’s comfrey remained a mass of mottled, desiccated leaves and yellowed stalks. I was resigned to the fact that it, like my friend, was gone. Then the rains came.
A week after Bill’s death, I knelt down beside the little plastic bucket and gingerly turned over the mat of umber oak leaves and dried stems at the base of the old, dead plant.. Six tiny, tender chartreuse sprouts were quietly emerging from the dark, damp soil. One for each season and direction. One for where we’ve been. And one for where we’re going.