A man gardens each morning. His knees ache and his arm isn’t as steady as it once was. But the routine brings him a feeling he can’t quite place. He stays out well past lunch time, to his wife’s contempt.

A woman spends her mornings in the garden. Her back aches and her legs aren’t so steady anymore. But to her, gardening is something she can’t quite let go. She stays out past lunch time despite her husband’s pleas.

“Am I your second wife?” the man’s wife demands. It seems to her that his first love is the garden. But the truth isn’t so simple.

“Am I your second husband?” the woman’s husband demands. It seems to him that her first love is the garden. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The man consoles his wife. He tries to put words to the feeling the garden brings him. “When you maintain a garden, you believe in the future. And when you believe in the future you have hope.”

The woman tries to share the feeling with her husband. “Look at the perennials. Aren’t they so beautiful?” she pleads. Her husband nods pleasantly but his sight is waning. He turns his attention elsewhere and tucks away a feeling of immense loss.

Five years later the man is on the floor. He has suffered a stroke and he will never maintain a garden again. His wife lets the garden fall into ruin. Then it becomes a graveyard. As the last perennial wilts, she thinks to herself, “why should his garden wilt with him?” And so she lifts the watering can and begins to work.

For a decade, the man’s health deteriorates as he watches the woman working in his garden. But the garden is no longer his. And he no longer believes.