A lilac grows beside my house, a small thing getting bigger every year. It was brought, the piece that was planted, from 800 kilometers away, from the place where Grandma’s ashes lay.

Above those ashes, a lilac grows grows, its fragrance perfuming the yard with the smell of memory. The bush is strong and tall now, how not when it has had nearly a decade to grow. The lavender coloured flowers burst forth every spring, their smell bringing forth the past.

Sitting below the bush, a plum on my plate, Grandma’s old amethyst ring on my finger, it was her birthstone; I was thirteen.

There in my mind was the porch with it’s small planters of violets. There the spot where I put the hammock frame, not for lazy days but for cool nights. There my mauve sleeping bag, awaiting nightfall when it would find itself useful once again. There, below, the yard surround by a garden of bushes. Lilacs, of course. Across the dusty dirt road, the sea sparkled magenta in the setting sun.

And now, her lilac grows here, at my home.