Thread by @alexdecampi

I’m packing up my mom’s house. It’s a task so large that my brain refuses to try to encompass all that it means, and instead is seizing on tiny, ultimately irrelevant details as if they have the power to shake the earth.

Such as the geranium that refuses to die.

Nobody’s lived in this house since end of August, and even then, my mom wasn’t exactly in a state to take care of things.

All living things had left the house, except three raggedy orchinds and a giant coral-pink geranium that I never recall anyone watering.

When I moved Mom (and her cats) out in August, I didn’t really have time / mental space to water plants before I left.

But when I returned in November, the three orchids and that geranium were still hanging on. I watered them, out of respect for their tenaciousness.

Back a scant month later to clean the house out for its new owners, and that damn geranium was so grateful for being watered that it had flowered.

It’s a tacky, brash pink, especially against its scraggly stems and few leaves.

I somehow got it in my head that the geranium HAS to survive now. That its continuance among the living means that nothing bad can happen any more, that all the bad is over with for now.

There are many more important things I should be concentrating on.

But the geranium (and the three orchids) are sitting in the front seat of my Fiat, ready to begin the drive south to NYC. I watered it a little bit. Not a lot; more when we get home.

I’m not even sure why I’m doing this. It’s too big for my NYC apartment. There are things I want to bring home more. I could just put it outside. Plants die all the time.

Yet here we are.

In this rash of partings and dyings, I guess I just want something to keep on living.

If that ugly, abandoned geranium can make it through 2018 and still flower, goddamnit, so can I.