In the Middle of the Night | Mary’s Farm

There’s a part in all of us that hopes we’ll bloom when darkness falls.

A few years ago, I advised a woman on writing her memoir. I’d known Mary Liz for a few years before that, and once, she showed me an essay she’d written about a plant that she’d been coddling for the past 50 years. It was a night-blooming cereus, a gangly, cactus-like plant that’s quite drab and ordinary most of the time. A few times a year, though, the Night Bloomer develops buds on its spindly branches, and, somewhat unpredictably, they burst into bloom—but only in the middle of the night. By morning, they’re like broken party balloons hanging limply from their branches. They leave behind a powerfully sweet, haunting fragrance that lingers into the daylight. Hers since the 1960s, when she rescued it from a friend’s garbage, the Night Bloomer has taken Mary Liz through the many phases of her life. In her heyday, she and her husband, Bruce, and friends often sat through the night to observe and celebrate the magnificent revelation of the mysterious flower. Corks popped as the astonishing starburst of a pure-white blossom slowly unfurled. Eventually, Mary Liz and Bruce moved to a retirement community. Fortunately, the facility had a greenhouse, where they installed the favored plant. They no longer stayed up till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, but instead, on the night of the bloom, other residents padded down the hall to the greenhouse in robes and slippers to watch the show, toasting paper cups of champagne (or perhaps ginger ale) to the explosive white blossom before retiring to their apartments. Soon after they moved to the retirement home, Bruce died. They’d been sweethearts since the seventh grade. After some time had passed, Mary Liz started sending a weekly e-mail to her friends and family, just to let them know how she was doing. I was one of the lucky recipients. She was, as she put it, “in my end game, the last stop on my life’s journey,” yet she clearly didn’t want to be the grieving widow. These messages accumulated, full of fond memories, upbeat reports, serendipitous encounters, and, of course, updates on the Night Bloomer. I was impressed by her candor and her fearless approach to this “end game.” As well, the plant seemed like a metaphor for her discreet, concealed life of joy. I suggested to Mary Liz that together we could use these e-mails to create a memoir and track the progress of her loss. We met weekly. We spent probably a year on this project, excerpting from the e-mails and knitting them together, and then Mary Liz filled in some gaps, which required her to feel the loss all over again. It was hard work, but she put her shoulder to the wheel and proved herself a fine assignment writer. Mary Liz titled her memoir Night Bloomer: Reflections on Good Grief. At the end, the 90-year-old Mary Liz wrote this: “I am blooming, perhaps not as exotically as my Night Bloomer, but day by day, week by week, flourishing, moving into a letting go of my own.” Mary Liz rewarded me with a cutting from her old Night Bloomer. It looked precarious, but I knew what lurked within. I repotted it and set it in a sunny window in my dining room. One day I sensed an overpowering perfume. Whose was that? I wondered. I went into the dining room and saw the bedraggled blossom. I had missed the show. For the Night Bloomer, vigilance is essential, and the search for meaning lasts longer than a midnight toast. Like life, I never know when the bloom is coming. Edie Clark’s latest book is What There Was Not to Tell: A Story of Love and War. Order your copy, as well as Edie’s other works, at:YankeeMagazine.com/storeoredieclark.com