I want to plan a garden this summer. Rows of green beans, stalks of corn sticking out of the black earth, watermelons crawling onto the grass and dimpling the lawn with their juicy, hefty weight. The yard was neglected last summer after Eric was diagnosed with leukemia. The weeds proved they are heartier and swalled up the flower beds. I fear a reprise of that, where it starts well with flowers blooming, green leaves soaking up the sun, and the weeds pulled, and then where there is nothing but weeds and dead leaves smothering everything else.

I fear the summer. I so want to enjoy the good things of summer, such as warm days, garage sales, taking pictures, walking Norris, but I am so scared of that looming month. I fear July. It's a month I'd rather skip. I was too out of it and worried, just trying to function to remember August. But July stands out, all the phone calls and the progression from worse to badder to even worse.

Knowing what I know now about July, I know how close I came to losing my boy. I know that while we can laugh now that he didn't know how to spell his own name or know his own date of brith, that he was encroaching on death. Perhaps, Eric was like a weed for Death, the man in black with the scythe, and Death was still on top of things in his yard. He pulled Eric out of his garden of doom and gloom and put him back into my life, made Eric a plant bloom before our eyes in a Hospital room in Minnesota. That's one garden that I will monitor closely, making sure Eric is healthy, nurished, well-grounded, surrounding my symbiotic relationships, and has the right amount of tender loving care.

So, maybe with these thoughts I can look forward to summer again, to allowing things to grow from the earth, and to knowing that even when it seems like it won't come back to life, it may surprise you.