The first time Edith woke to find everything about her surroundings to be infused with lavender, she was delighted. Lavender had been her favorite color and scent her entire life. Like the fact that her name began with an “E” like every other woman in her family, her love of lavender had also been passed down from her grandmother, Escargot, or Essie as everyone preferred to call her. Yes, her grandmother had been named after snails. But at least they were fancy snails.
As a child, Edith remembered sitting on Essie’s lap, leaning her head on her soft shoulder while she listened to her read a story. And with every breath, her nostrils would be filled with the sweet, flowery, and woodsy smell of her grandma’s favorite lavender bar soap.
What first began as simply a child’s attempt to replicate what their favorite adult did, became a way to remember someone. Someone who had slowly lost their ability to remember what lavender even was and who would then eventually slip away. Over the years, every time Edith had splashed some of her lavender eau de toilette or slipped into her favorite lilac silk chiffon nightgown, she felt as though her most favorite person in the world, her Essie, had reached down from heaven and hugged her.
On the morning of her first lavender dream, or whatever these were, Edith’s eyes had fluttered open to find herself lying on a bed covered in light purple sheets and a puffy lavender comforter. Lilac-colored curtains billowed in a lavender-scented breeze that danced through a set of open French doors that overlooked the ocean. A purple ocean.
For some odd reason, Edith didn’t feel panicked by anything that she was seeing. She was aware that she probably should be at least curious as to what was happening, but on that first day, all she could do was feel relaxed and smile.
The room was not the room she had woken up in for the last 53 years. And she had never lived near the ocean. She and her husband Glenn had often dreamt about buying an old beach cottage, but marriage, children, grandchildren, and cancer would mean that dream would never come to fruition. Her daughter and granddaughter had encouraged her to make it happen after Glenn had passed last year, but it had been a dream they shared, and experiencing it without him would not have felt right.
She had walked out the French doors and stared in awe at the seemingly never-ending pool of purple water stretched before her. Gentle waves lapped at the sand and big lavender bushes softly rocked back and forth on either side of the porch. She ventured out to the beach and looked in both directions but found nothing else around her.
The purple waves seemed to summon her and so she complied. Lifting the end of her long chiffon dress, she jogged over, realizing that for the first time in a very long time, her knees and her ankles didn’t hurt when she moved. When she reached the shore, she leaned down, letting her hand skim across the surface. When she brought her hand up to her face, she expected to see lavender beads of water on her hand, but it was bone dry. She tried again, sticking her hand and arm all the way up to her elbow into the water. Still, when she pulled it out, her hand and arm were completely dry.
“Very curious,” she said.
Today, however, Edith was not quite as keen on the whole lilac experience (her latest nickname for whatever was happening to her). Perhaps because it was her 854th day here. Very little seemed to change here, except for the entries in the journal by the bed and the tally marks on the wall in the bedroom. There were rows and rows of marks. Ten groups of five made up each line. At the end of each line, there was an equal sign and then 50 written. And the journal on the nightstand next to the bed was filled with entries. The entries were mostly notes Edith took about what she was seeing and experiencing. Other entries seemed to be cries for help that she hoped someone would somehow see and help her leave this lavender hell.
The entries were not labeled with a date, because Edith had no recollection of the date. She knew how old she was (92) and she knew approximately what year it was (2024), but she couldn’t remember for the life of her what month it was. Instead of dates, she used the corresponding number for the tally marks: 1, 2, 3, and so on.
During her first week, she noticed that all the things that usually caused her pain, such as her arthritis, were nonexistent. In fact, she felt as if she were young and strong and full of energy. She spent one day running as fast as she could up and down the shoreline. Back and forth and back and forth. Occasionally, she’d yell out, “Nothing hurts!” And she noticed her breathing wasn’t labored either, just as it had been all those years ago when she had been an avid runner. She’d run faster and faster, leaping over imaginary hurdles in the sand until the world melted around her and she found herself waking up to yet another day, or at least that is what she thought was happening.
Then there were the birds. Two birds visited her each day when she went out to the porch for the first time after waking. There was a small white one with taupe speckles on its wings. It would be joined by another small bird with an orange chest and darker brown wings. Their beaks would open and close and the birds would tilt their heads to the side and peer into Edith’s eyes. Having nothing else better to do and no one else to talk to, Edith began trying to have conversations with the birds a few weeks in. And it occurred to her that the birds never made any sound. She leaned closer to them, hoping that they wouldn’t peck her face off. Nothing. Not even the sound of breath or a subtle chirp. The birds were mute.
Edith had also tasted everything. The linens, the plants, even a feather from one of the birds. Everything tasted like lavender. And it didn’t really matter, anyway, because she was never hungry. Never tired. Never . . . anything except there.
As the weeks and months rolled by — though she was starting to forget what weeks and months even were — her curiosity over trying to figure out the puzzle that was her existence morphed into frustration. She felt trapped in a beautiful place that seemed to resemble everything that, up until this point, had brought her a sense of tranquility.
She had contemplated that she was dreaming, perhaps lucid dreaming. Or that perhaps she was in a coma. She couldn’t think of any other possible answers. And she really didn’t have the energy to try and figure it all out anymore. All she knew was that she wanted to be free of this place. If this place had meant for her to feel comforted, it no longer had that effect.
“Edith!” A voice called out to her. A familiar voice that she had longed to hear every day.
She ran through the French doors and out to the porch and smiled when she saw him. Glenn, her husband, walked up to the porch with arms outreached. “Glenn,” she cried. She attempted to reach out to him and hug him, but her arms slipped right through him. “Oh, Glenn, what’s happening to me?”
“What have you always said about life?”
Frustration exploded across Edith’s brow. She didn’t understand why she needed to try and figure anything else out. Why someone couldn’t help her.
And as if Glenn could hear her thoughts, he said, “Because sometimes it’s best if we find the answers ourselves.”
Edith sighed. “Life is all about our hearts and learning to listen to them.” And just as Edith had always done when she said her trademark line, she raised her hand to her chest. A lilac-colored tear traveled down her cheek when she noticed that the familiar drumbeat of her life was no longer there.
Glenn reached out to her, weaving her fingers into his. “You’re ready now.”
“I’m dead?” She asked, as a steady stream of tears now danced down her rosy cheeks.
Glenn nodded.
“But what happens now?
Glenn pulled her close to him. “Now, we have an eternity to rest.”
“But I have so many . . .”
Placing his finger on her lips, he then leaned down and kissed her. “I know you have a lot of questions. But you won’t after we leave. Everything will make sense over there.” Glenn pointed to the edge of the horizon. “Are you ready?”
Edith looked over to the water and saw that a sailboat had appeared. And she gasped when she saw the sun dipping down into the ocean. “It just occurred to me that I have never seen the sunset since I’ve been here.”
“You weren’t ready to see your final one.” Glenn placed his hand on Edith’s back and guided her off the porch.
Just as Edith was about to step onto the boat, something stopped her. She looked over her back and whispered, “I’m okay.”
In Sun Valley, Idaho, a young woman named Elodie pushed her toddler, Esmie, absently down the bread aisle of her local grocery store. She and her husband had eaten all the casseroles that friends and family had brought over. Her mother, Evelyn, had phoned her just that morning and encouraged her to go out and try, as hard as it would be, to find a routine again.
But everything she tried to do, even though they were normal things she had done a million times before, like brush her teeth, make a pot of coffee, breathe . . . it all felt foreign in this new phase of her life. A phase where her grandmother no longer existed.
She had woken up in a sweat the night before worrying over whether her grandmother was okay. “Of course, she isn’t,” she had screamed to herself, waking her daughter up. “She’s dead!” And she proceeded to cry for what felt like days until sleep found her once more.
It had been approximately 854 hours since she had heard the dreaded flat line on the heart rate monitor at the hospital. Eight hundred and fifty-four hours since she had felt her grandmother’s hand in hers. When she squeezed it one more time before kissing it and leaning over to her grandmother’s ear, tears staining her pillow, she whispered, “I love you. Please let me know you’re okay.”
She had waited for a sign every day. Every hour. But there had been nothing. And it was torturing her.
Esmie let out what sounded like a half-burp, half-laugh, pulling Elodie out of her trance. Looking at her daughter, she noticed Esmie was pointing at something. “Are you picking out a bread for Momma?” But then Elodie looked at the area where her daughter pointed.
Sitting between two loaves of Nature Valley Honey Wheat bread appeared to be a toy that had been either abandoned by a child or placed there by a parent not willing to buy another toy. It was a small stuffed dinosaur. And it was purple.
Choking back tears, Elodie picked up the toy, already knowing that she would absolutely buy it for her daughter. But before she handed it over, she brought it up to her face and placed her cheek next to it, hoping it would help to wipe away her tears. For the rest of her life, whenever she saw purple, she would think of her grandmother, Edith. Perhaps this had been the sign she was waiting for. But then she took a deep breath and cried a little more. It was lavender. The elephant was scented lavender. On the tag, it said it was a snuggle toy to help soothe and relax.
Elodie closed her eyes and held the dinosaur close. “You’re okay. I miss you. I love you. And I know you’re okay.”
A big smile spread across Edith’s face. She could feel a warmth wrapping around her and she knew it wasn’t from the setting sun.
“Let’s sail,” she said, as she grabbed her husband’s hand and entered the boat. She stood in front of him, leaning back onto his chest. His chin on her head. They drifted silently past the setting sun, where the lavender world would melt around them and they could rest and drift in peace.
Lisa M. Gott 