It was only an azalea bush. A 4-foot tall, 15-foot around azalea bush. A dead brown azalea bush. No flowers and no leaves. Not even the microscopic appearance that there would ever again be a leaf. By the middle of April in northeastern Pennsylvania, the other azalea bushes had begun to sprout leaves; many had even begun flowering. But not this one. It was an unsightly bunch of dried hard-brown spindly sticks jutting hodgepodge from the ground, every stick dead. Not just cryogenic dead from its winter hibernation, but cease-to-exist dead. As in never again.
    In the back yard, the other bushes were coming to life, and this one was just taking up space. And so Carol Patton, a young housewife who had moved into the house in rural Danville the previous fall, decided it was time to get rid of the dead bush, clear the ground, plant something else. A hatchet would do the job just nicely, she thought. The kind that Boy Scouts use to chop firewood.
    Whack. She wasn’t as strong as she thought. Whack. The branch had fallen off. Whack, Whack. A few more chops, a small drizzle of sweat, and she had a half-dozen dried branches lying on the ground.
    Maybe I’ll just chop the trunk, she thought, figuring that by devoting all her energy into wiping out the base of her problem she would get it over faster, then let her husband dig up the roots. She took a deep breath, reared back, prepared to put all her strength into a half-dozen well-placed chops, get rid of this relic, and move on to other parts of her garden. She didn’t get another chance.
    “Oh, Sweetheart, sweetheart, don’t do that! Please, don’t do that!” came the frantic cry of her 77-year-old neighbor who rushed out his house, across the back yard and to her side. “I know this is your house,” he said, “and you can do to your yard anything you want, but please don’t kill that bush.”
    The neighbors sure are strange here, she thought, but she listened to him. After all, he was a friendly chap, always put out water for the birds, always had a kind word to say to everyone.
    “Oh, please, please don’t kill that bush,” he begged. Yes, thought the new home owner, this was truly an odd neighbor, one who apparently liked dead bushes. Maybe his memory was more alive than this eyesore he was so fervently pleading for. Elderly people sometimes remember how things were, not how they are.
    “Well, it’s dead,” she said, wiping her brow with the back of her hand.
    “No it’s not!” the neighbor said emphatically. “Yours is the most beautiful bush in the block.” A dead plant is beautiful? she thought, but she listened. “This plant,” he explained, pleading for its life, “always blooms later than any other around here.” He didn’t know why. It just did. “I know you can kill it if you want to because it’s your yard, but please wait,” he begged. “You’ll see. It’ll come to life and it’ll be the most beautiful plant in the whole block.”
    The homeowner didn’t buy that. Maybe once it had come to life; maybe once it had bloomed. Maybe it never had come to life, a still birth planted in hope by a former house owner. Whatever. But now it was dead. Dry wood dead. Stoke the fireplace with its branches dead. And, it was taking up space. Space that another plant could use. But the man was persistent, a tear coming to his eye. So, she talked to him, put aside the hatchet, and agreed to let the dead plant take up space. For awhile at least. More to appease him than true belief.
    As carpets of white, purple and orange azalea petals bloomed, fell off, and covered the freshly trimmed lawns of her neighbors, Carol Patton looked at her own pathetic bundle of sticks, wondering why she hadn’t just dug it out and planted something that would have caused her to worry about aphids, not termites.
    Then, one day, she noticed a small, almost insignificant green bud. Illusion? Imagination? Soon there was another. Then another. And another. Not long after, there were leaves. Within a month, the bush was covered by deep pink flowers, on top of each other, beside each other, beneath each other, overtaking the brown sticks and green leaves. A blanket of color had buried what once was a dead brown bush that seemed to have outlived its usefulness. For three weeks, it bloomed, then the lush green of life re-emerged, staying until the first frosts.
    Two years later, her neighbor became a widower; almost eight years later, he suffered a hip fracture and had to go to a nursing home; a few months after that, William Young, known as Bungy by his friends, was dead. But the plant he had saved is still blooming. And like he had said, it is truly the most beautiful plant in the neighborhood.

Copyright 2001 Walter M. Brasch