Chapter 26
Let’s take Gabriel to Fantasy in Lights,” Peter suggested when we finished decorating our house for Christmas. “We can take silly Santa pictures, drink hot cocoa, ride the trolley through the woods to see the lights…”
Did he realize we’d been to the Callaway Gardens light show twice since it’d opened for the season? I didn’t think he did. Life with Huntington’s was hard—going to a beautiful place over and over again wasn’t, so I chose to ignore the repetition.
“Sure.” My lips touched his cheek. “I’ll have Mom and Dad meet us there. There’s enough daylight left for us to enjoy some couple time at the park while they play with Gabriel. Good idea?”
“Great idea.” He put his arms around me and rested his head on mine in a rare fidgeting-free moment.
In the seven months since my visit to Camp Dream, we’d learned to accept a reality we couldn’t change. Early HD symptoms like fidgeting and restlessness had become a constant for him, enough that by Gabriel’s first birthday in the fall, everyone could tell there was something going on with his health.
Watching his body struggle was upsetting and heartbreaking, but I got used to it. Watching his mind struggle was almost impossible for me to watch, and I would never, ever, get used to it. He’d been a brilliant landscape artist with works featured in some of the best professional magazines in the world, but those days were gone now.
The quality of his displays at Callaway had declined during the summer. The work itself was excellent but always resembled combinations he’d used before. There was nothing innovative about it—the creative spark was gone.
So in the fall, when he’d asked me if I would look down on him if he quit, I stopped short of doing a victory dance. He’d decided to step down while he was still ahead, and that’s what I’d been praying for.
My relationship with God hadn’t improved much during that time, but I’d learned to detect His hand in my life. My feelings toward Him often mirrored my feelings toward Mom—I knew the two of them were often right, God probably always—but my rebel heart struggled to acknowledge their wisdom sometimes.
I had to recognize, though, that it’d been God who’d put the desire to plant in my heart and that it’d been a brilliant move on His part. Planting wasn’t like me and didn’t seem to serve much of a purpose—until it did. When Peter quit the park, I’d just committed to landscaping twenty-three homes on my own. But all of a sudden, I wasn’t planting on my own anymore—I had a partner.
We’d become a family business, going to work in my truck and bringing Gabriel and his playpen with us. We studied pond design and installation together, and soon we had water features in place in a dozen yards. In preparation for planting season, Peter taught me all he knew about gardening to keep pests away and to attract butterflies. He felt important, and I felt blessed. All things considered, we were having a lovely time, and regardless of Huntington’s, both Peter and I still had pretty great lives.
Once we arrived at Callaway, Mom and Dad took Gabriel to the butterfly center while Peter and I went for a walk at the azalea bowl.
Some people didn’t like azaleas because they flower beautifully for about a month but are otherwise uneventful-looking bushes. I liked them. They were hardy, much like I would have to be in the coming years. How hard would life get? And would there be flowering seasons for us? I wasn’t sure.
I followed the reflection of the azalea bushes around the quiet lake, and I spotted another couple walking on the other side of the water. They were looking at us. Or maybe they were only looking at Peter, watching as he struggled to walk. They probably thought he was drunk. If only they knew.
“There it is.” Peter spotted the sequoia from the main path.
I squeezed his hand. After only two years, our tree was already about twelve feet tall, almost twice Peter’s height.
“By this time next year the roots won’t reach down so much. They’ll start branching out more. I read the lateral development of the roots is so strong that a very large sequoia can have an area of influence of four square acres.”
I looked around trying to imagine the root systems beneath everything I saw, not sure how our sequoia would establish itself.
“Don’t worry. Most of the root system is made up of tiny, threadlike feeders that spread out from the larger roots near the base.”
“Oh.” We walked through the bushes and got near our tree. Our hands touched the thickening bark before we sat on the ground by the trunk.
“Ana, do you really like planting?”
“I really do. Why?”
“This business is getting big, and it will only continue to grow. What are you going to do when I’m not able to work with you?”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“You have to. I want you to.”
“Peter, come on.”
“Why aren’t you participating in The Nutcracker?”
“Because I’m an ungrateful person. I can’t enjoy what I have. All I do is mope over what I don’t have. So I’m happy taking classes three times a week. That’s all I’m going to do. No more parts. No more stage. No more setting myself up for failure.”
“You had big dreams. Easy on yourself…”
I nodded, unable to speak. He always had such faith and confidence in me. Why couldn’t I?
Peter put his arm around my shoulders. “We’ll go full out next spring with the planting, but after that, you should dance more and plant less.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes me feel like you are slipping away already when you talk like that. We’re having fun with it. Let’s just do it until we can’t. Don’t do this, Peter.”
“You need to take care of yourself and think about what really makes you happy, Ana. You have a long journey ahead of you.”
“Please stop talking like this. We have a long journey, and we will be just fine.”
“Promise you will think about it. This is for me too—to have peace when I start feeling my body and my brain falling apart to the point I don’t even understand what’s going on around me. I’ll need to know for sure that you and Gabriel are happy.”
I nodded again.
“You’ll marry again.”
“No. You’re not dying.”
“I am.”
“But not now. Please stop.” I can’t live without you.
He leaned his back against the tree and scanned the darkening skies above us.
We both watched the same red-tailed hawk in silence.
“I want to be that hawk.” Peter looked less intense now. “Soaring on the thermals, hanging on updrafts. Not a care in the world.”
“You wanna be a chicken hawk?”
“Yep. I wanna be a chicken hawk.”
I stood up and reached for his hand. “Come on.”
“Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you, Ana, but it was important for me to say these things. I only have one more thing to ask, and I promise you—I promise you—I will never talk like this again.”
“Here it comes. Shoot.”
“Whenever I go, be it in five years or twenty, remember me strong.”
“Too easy. You are strong.”
“Bring Gabriel here and show him this tree. Watch it grow strong and think of me. Who knows? It could become the tallest tree in the world one day.” He looked up at the growing crown. “I think I told you that its full name is Sequoia Sempervirens—it comes from Latin and means ‘always alive’—evergreen. You’ll find shade here always.”
A lifetime welled up in his eyes—his lifetime—cut short, and I struggled to keep my lips steady as my eyes swam in tears too.
“I am not this disease, Ana. I don’t want to ever be defined by HD. I am not HD. I am just Peter—a planter, a lover, a daddy. A strong man. I’ve made a good life for myself, and I’ve got all I ever wanted. Even if only for a moment.”
I nodded and swallowed hard. I wanted to tell him we were going to get through it and that there would be a major scientific breakthrough in time to save his brain. But he already knew my feelings on this. I didn’t have to say it. He knew it. He knew me.
“So you’ll bring him here?”
“Of course.”
Peace, instead of pain, shimmered in those blue eyes of his, but I wasn’t quite there yet. We rocked in silence, dancing to the sound of whatever leaves were left, still blowing in the cold wind.
Could we still go to church together before he got too ill? I’d asked before but he’d said no. Maybe now? We’d never been to a mass, or whatever Baptists call what they do when they gather. “Why can’t we go to church? What do you have against it?”
“You know how you feel about dancing? You should be happy, but you’re not?”
“Yes.”
“It’s how I feel about God. In theory, I should be happy. I grew up in church. I know my Bible. I get it. But I don’t feel it. Not anymore.”
“So, you just don’t believe anymore?”
“I believe. It’s all real. God is real. Jesus is real. He is my Savior.” Peter shook his head, and his thoughts seemed to drift somewhere else for a moment. “But religion doesn’t work for me. I missed a turn somewhere, I guess. Too much hurt in my life.”
“We should try just one time.” Maybe I should tell him what Jacqueline had said about Jesus not defeating the Romans and being interested in eternal solutions instead, but he probably already knew that. His words echoed in my head: I grew up in church. I know my Bible.
“I’m not ready, Ana.”
“But I need it, and I can’t do this without you.”
His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “Tell you what, you think about planting less and dancing more, and I’ll think about church.”
“Oh, an ultimatum?”
“Call it what you will. I told you what’s important to me, and you told me what’s important to you. If we compromise a little, we can both get what we want.” His eyebrows rose. “You also need to retire that little New Testament and get a real Bible—a complete King James Bible.”
“I like my little Bible.”
He shrugged, but I wasn’t sure if he’d meant to or not. That’s when I realized his body had been unusually relaxed by the sequoia. Maybe this will be our special place to forget the disease. I remembered the testimony I’d read when I was pregnant.
There is a beautiful garden there with a large pond and a fountain. We’ve always liked gardens… That’s going to be our special time, a time to look away from the building, away from the disease, and into the life and love we can still share in these final years.
We still had many years. We had to.
“Let’s go meet the others,” Peter said. “It’s getting dark.”
We met up with my family and did what we’d planned to do. We took silly Santa pictures, drank hot cocoa, and rode the trolley through the woods to see the lights.
Gabriel looked at about two million of the eight million lights in the five-mile ride, but then the night and the rocking motion got the better of him. By the time we reached the Snowflake Valley display, he was asleep.
Mom turned back and handed Peter a blanket, and I used my free hand to help him spread it on our laps.
“If the light strings were all connected, they would stretch from here to Baltimore, Maryland,” I heard the lady on the other side of Peter say.
“I’m sure glad they’re not all connected,” he said in my ear.
I put my finger on my lips and giggled.
Behind us, a cute little boy sang his way past the Swan Lake and Hummingbird Fountain exhibit. “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.”
And as we traveled quietly from the last display to the parking lot, cloaked by the dark Georgia night, I wondered what a Christmas market in Germany really looked like. Claus had always said the one in Wiesbaden was beautiful and had promised we would hit a Glühwein stand every night of the holiday season to stay warm on the way home. I hadn’t thought about him in a very long time. Why now?
But only God knows what if… And what a heartless thing to think. Shoo.
When the Jolly Trolley stopped, Mom put her arms around Gabriel, who was still asleep on my lap, and helped me down. Peter was having a hard time getting up from the seat and off the trolley, but Dad helped him.
I smiled at the memory of him leaping off the trolley and proposing on another cold night three years earlier, while keeping Gabriel warm in my arms.
So I would consider getting back on stage for him, and he would consider going to church for me. That seemed fair. It could be done. But I couldn’t stop planting. My eyes filled up with hot tears. Images of us landscaping as a family filled my head. “I love you so much, Peter.”
“I love you too.” His hand rested on my shoulder as we walked to the truck.