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BY GREGORY J. RUMMO

LIFE IN THE BOONIES

I stood in my garden last night pondering the irony of recent events.

It was a little over two months ago that my yard was a study in sepia, gray and white. What remained of last year's perennials were gnarled, skeletal forms bent double, broken and almost completely buried in a tomb of snow and ice.

And then in March, the earth arrived in its orbit at that place where every year in these parts the plant and animal kingdoms are slowly awakened from their winter slumber and the transformation began.

A few warm days in early April lit the fuse and everything popped seemingly at once. Cooler weather followed, retarding the fading of the earliest and bravest forsythias while the magnolias and dogwoods and other flowering trees caught up until there was a full symphony of colors throughout suburbia.

Where last year's mulch had been frozen hard as iron, trumpet vines, dotted with bright red and yellow flowers have emerged to compete for space on my trellises with several varieties of clematis. Azaleas in hues of scarlet, purple and pink, arranged together in a corner are so bright it almost hurts the eyes to gaze at them for an extended period of time when the early morning sun sets them ablaze. Add to this the sweet fragrance pouring from the white flowers covering my schip laurels and it is easy to be lulled into a trance.

The creation is giving testimony to rebirth and the promise of a resurrection.

In another place not far away lies a woman. She has days, perhaps a week or two at most to live. There are no flowers here, except for the occasional bouquet sent by a well-wisher. The woman is my wife's mother. She is spending the last few weeks of her life in a hospital bed in our home.

It was a little over 17 years ago when it was discovered that hepatitis-C, most likely contracted from a blood transfusion from an earlier surgery, had ravaged her liver. She was placed on a transplant list and several months later, a match was found from a woman who had died in a car accident in the Washington D.C. area. The surgery was successful and the new liver extended her life for well over a decade, allowing her to enjoy her family including her nine grandchildren that range in age from two to 23 years old.

Sleeping most of the time now, she barely eats — ice cream is her favorite — and she only manages to keep her mouth and throat moist from ice chips that her husband lovingly feeds to her. He is constantly at her side; sleeping on a recliner next to her bed during the long, dark nights; keeping vigil, waiting for the inevitable. A narcotic cocktail of Methadone, Lorazepam and as needed, Morphine helps her to endure the pain.

My mother-in-law is profoundly deaf as were her parents and her other siblings. She was born in Osaka, Japan and grew up there during the post World War II era when resources were scarce and life difficult. The family's deafness exacerbated their struggles.

When I was dating her daughter — now my wife — she took the time to teach me sign language. When I finally learned enough so that we could have a dialogue, she shared some of these horror stories with me; like the instance when it was announced in her village that there were fish for the people to eat but by the time they realized what was happening and got in line, all that was leftover were fish heads.

But she also shared with me an incident that changed her life literally forever. As a teenager, two Christian women, evangelical missionaries, visited her village. They shared with her the message of the Gospel and it transformed her life.

The chill of the evening finally snaps me back to reality. The contrast between what is occurring inside and outside of our home could not be greater. Out here in my garden I am surrounded by life rising up from what was a sleeping earth; inside, I watch helplessly as the earth rises up to take a sleeping life.

But the irony is that both are testimonies to a rebirth and a resurrection. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me will live even if he dies."

The lush growth springing up around me is the Creator's reminder that I will see her again some day in a better place.

Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist and the author of "The View from the Grass Roots." Contact him at GregRummo.com

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