I rolled up the door of unit 22, sick with dread, and the cool air rolled out, and the light fell on shelves of small labeled jars and envelopes, hundreds of them, and a workbench, and a wall of photographs of the most beautiful garden I had ever seen.
I stepped into the cool and opened the nearest jar. Seeds.
Couldnt take the heat or the cold, the woman had said, and now I understood, seeds lose their life in heat and damp, they must be kept cool and dry to stay alive, and my Gerald had been preserving something living: a whole garden, in seed.
The shelves held the seeds of every plant Gerald ever grew, saved and labeled across the years, an entire lifetime of heirloom flowers and vegetables, some of them varieties passed down in his family for generations.
My Gerald, who told me when he changed a light bulb, had been quietly building a seed bank, preserving the living memory of his familys garden in a climate-controlled room where the seeds would stay alive for decades.
His letter, on the workbench, explained. He wrote: Old girl, these seeds are alive, or they will be if someone plants them. My grandmothers tomatoes are in here, and her mothers roses, seeds that have been in my family a hundred years. Seeds die in the heat, so I keep them cool. I could not stand to let a hundred years of my familys garden die with me. Plant them, old girl, or give them to folks who will. That is how a garden lives forever. Love, Gerald.
I wept in that cool room among a hundred years of living seeds, my husbands quiet immortality.
Couldnt take the heat or the cold, because the seeds were alive, and he was keeping them alive for the future.
I am no gardener like Gerald, but I could not let a century of life die in those jars. I found a seed-saving library and a community garden, and I brought them Geralds seeds, and they were astounded, for some of his heirloom varieties, they said, were nearly extinct, saved nowhere else on earth.
They planted them that very spring. Geralds grandmothers tomatoes grow again now, and her mothers roses, in a community garden tended by dozens of hands, their seeds shared with gardeners across the country.
My son did not know why I drove out toward the airport. Now he knows his daddy was saving a hundred years of living garden. Couldnt take the heat or the cold, because seeds are life, and Gerald would not let his familys life die. His garden blooms again every summer now, everywhere. He lives in every seed, every bloom, every hundred-year-old tomato. My good, green-thumbed Gerald.