Only when I think of you.

He loves gardening, the pruning, the digging, the cutting, the growing, the flourishing, the minutiae of caring for another living thing. It's been a hard winter but he's been able to get some budding from the greenhouse, though he has to get up early to scrape off the snow before sunrise. So what was once new has become familiar, each new day bringing an iota of warmth into the cold, bleak, February mornings.

Of Isabel he thinks when his eyes water or his glasses fog with effort in the crisp air. His eyes glaze as he puffs on his carved bone pipe. What sick coincidence that though it was he that smoked , it was she who developed cancer. She used to love the scent of the pipe tobacco he smoked, the heady perfume that stuck to him and all the clothes he wore. That followed him as he went from room to room in their house, as he went from room to room in the hospital. She always knew how to find him, even without calling his name.

He stopped smoking after she died, from guilt, from shame, from longing. But the withdrawl from the years of nicotine abuse was too strong for his fragile body do endure without her to keep him strong. He smoked day and night for months, his mouth turned to ash and his skin sallowed and greasy. He smoked everyday until their anniversary.

He woke up coughing as usual, reached for the oxygen, drew two shallow breaths and fell back in bed, sick from the effort of living. He reached for his pipe and tabacco pouch with trembling hands, dropped them lazily, and consigned himself to his fate by rolling over in bed. Three hours later he digs around his bedroom for the pipe, reaching under his bed, sifting through old things, forgotten things, that lay molding in this air of depression.

He uncovers his wedding album, at first seeing only her, then, as his fat tears roll along the cellophane pages, they roll into the forgetmenots pressed into the pages. He'd never noticed them before. Each page carefully adorned by a bouquet of flowers, dried and clumsily painted a lackluster version of themselves.

Everywhere he looks, where once there was nothing, now there are flowers. He thought he knew everything about her. He left his pipe unfound on the floor, chilled by the February snow. He drags his tired body to their library to dig up any books they have on flowers.