Free Betty's (Little Basement) Garden by Laurel Dewey Page A

all you’re focused on, that’s all that’s going to get fed back to you. Look in another direction. Up, down –”
    â€œUp? You mean like in God?”
    â€œNo, I’m not going religious on you. God’s not just up there anyway. He’s everywhere. Even in your ‘four D’s.’ Your disarray, dysfunction –”
    â€œDisappointment, despair, disharmony and death,” she reiterated with precision.
    He laughed. “Yeah, you’ve got that welded into your psyche, don’t you? You really do buy into it.”
    This was getting too personal for Betty. “I have to –”
    â€œYou’re a gardener. You know what I’m talking about.”
    â€œHow did you know I liked to garden?”
    â€œI’m psychic,” he said with a straight face and a long pause for effect. Finally, he smiled. “Actually, I saw the dirt under your fingernails. Either you like to garden or you’re filthy. And by the way you dress and carry yourself and speak, I know you’re not the latter.”
    She glanced at her fingernails, silently chiding herself for not noticing the packed mud beneath her nails. “Yes. Right. I’m a gardener.”
    â€œSo, you know what I’m saying. When you’re one with the soil and the plants, and that silent ballet between the two of you occurs, there is only delicious, delectable, dizzying…uh, I’ve run out of positive words that start with ‘D,’ but you get the point. I’m not a wordy person like you.”
    â€œWordy? I wouldn’t call myself that –”
    â€œYou think you have to explain yourself a lot. Somebody must have spent a lot of years driving that into you.”
    â€œI believe that being precise is important.”
    He looked at her. Really looked at her. “Why?”
    She wasn’t about to back down, even though she had no clue what she was about to say. “It clarifies one’s approach. It allows one to be understood. It avoids chaos.”
    â€œIt keeps you in your head and not your heart. And when you spend all that energy in your head, that damned tension builds up. And then your neck starts to spasm, and your jaw clenches and then you show up here looking for a salve, thinking that’s going to fix it. All that’s going to do is address the symptoms.”
    Betty felt lost. “Symptoms…well, that’s all we can hope for, right.” A familiar sadness crept up. “Never address the heart of the problem.”
    Jeff’s eyes softened. “You okay, Betty?”
    She swallowed hard. Think, think, think , she counseled herself. Think about what to fix Buddy for lunch. Think about the marigolds that need to be re-potted. Think about all those damn weeds that have to be pulled. Think. “I’ll just go purchase this now. Thank you for your help.” She started down the aisle, gathering her resilience with each step. “We must fight the good fight and carry on!”
    â€œNo, actually,” Jeff countered. “It’s the fighting that got you to this point. It’s the letting go that matters.”
    Betty stopped as a familiar image surfaced. Her head spun with apprehension. The raw emotion began to churn in her gut and she knew she had to get out of there as soon as possible. She paid for the salve and hurriedly left the store. But she could feel his knowing eyes on her, even as she drove away.
~~~
    She tried to swallow the grief as she drove home – to think of anything else but her only child. But lately, all attempts at pushing it away were met with resistance.
    Death, she’d come to discover, is a frigid woman – isolating and unable to be penetrated. The glory of the afterlife is left to faith, but to those left behind it can be a shrouded specter. For a moment, you can believe you feel the presence of your loved one but then the distance of death surfaces and you realize faith can only