Somewhere there is a little blue house nestled amongst irises and mature trees.  The little blue house has seen the trees grow from saplings to the giants they are now.  They’ve grown up together.

The little blue house is not so little now.  Over the years, Pete and Martha have added on — first to accommodate their children and then their grandchildren.  Soon it will be time to leave the little blue house to someone who will love it and move to small, more convenient digs somewhere in town close to doctors and pharmacies.  Pete and Martha are at that age.

But for now, Martha wakes up in the morning as Pete brings her the first cup of coffee of the day.  This is Pete’s job – the brewing of coffee – and he takes it very seriously.  None of those fancy contraptions for him.  No sir.  An old-fashioned percolator on the wood stove.  Pete can tell by the clattering of the glass knob on the top exactly when the coffee is done. 

The coffee combined with the fragrance of burning oak is Martha’s happy moment.  That she can begin each day thus is a gift that she is very grateful for.

Pete feels the same way about the breakfast that Martha makes for him after her second cup.  Usually eggs and sausage and biscuits – the latter also cooked on the woodstove, but in a cast ion pan more than a 100 years old.  It had been Martha’s grandmother’s. When Martha’s arthritis isn’t flaring, she will sometimes make pancakes, French toast or crepes filled with fruit from the yard.

Except for a brief stint with chickens, Martha and Pete did not have any farm animals or pets.  When their dog Lucy, and the cat Fred died they had been too heart broken to consider something with that kind of power ever again.  Both had grieved for a very long time.  Even now, Martha finds herself preparing to fill the cat’s dish when she remembers.  Yes, Martha has left the cat’s dish on the mat by the pantry for the past few years.  She just can’t bear to dismantle the feeding station, Lucy’s dish was still beside the door.   Oh, how she loved to romp through the woods chasing squirrels. She’d had a good life.

With gratitude, Pete washes the dishes while Martha dresses – changing into jeans, a sweatshirt that says Best Grandmother Ever, and thick hand-knitted socks with her hair settled into a messy bun secured with an old chopstick her dad brought home from Vietnam. 

Martha pours her third cup of coffee and heads to the front porch where she sits and rocks and writes in her journal. Every day.  For years and years.  The old journals gathering dust in a large box in the back of her closet. 

By the time she drains that last cup, she is done writing and heads for the garden to find flowers to put in the vase on the coffee table.  It’s a weekly chore that she does happily and lightly.  All seasons, she does this.  In the winter, it is an arrangement of twigs and dried grasses –in the fullness of summer it is roses and mountain laurel. 

Today it will be irises – purple and yellow.  They came from her great grandmother’s house too – that old woman having dug them up from her grandmother’s homeplace in Tennessee.  They had a long pedigree. Martha did not where her great- great – great grandmother had gotten them.  She fantasized that they came over from Ireland on the immigrants’ ship, but that was probably foolish thinking.

Arranging the flowers, she tiptoes about the living room while Pete napped in his recliner.  Up since 4 am, he relied on naps throughout the day to be able to stay up late to spend time with Martha in the evening.

Something seemed off to Martha.  And then she realized.  It was too quiet. Pete was not snoring.  She went to him quickly but quietly. 

Yes, he was dead, already getting cold.  Martha sat on the floor next to him, holding his hand, crying, and praying his way into heaven. 

The tomorrow she had dreaded was here.  Her life, her happy life, had changed in an instant

Martha wiped her tears and tried to steel herself for a future she had never dared to imagine.  Pete, gone.  How would she?  How would she do anything.  She didn’t know.  And she cried some more.