I Still Miss Darryl

Who could guess that Darryl Wright would leave such an endurable trail of memories behind him? I truly think of him every single day, and he has been gone for 3 1/2 years already. 

This morning at 6:00, while it was still only 76 degrees out, I tackled the vines that have been growing up onto our house.  I clipped and pulled and dragged -- and sweated -- and remembered that Darryl used to come over from time to time with Clinton and deal with the wildness that surrounds our house. It was Darryl who planted it all originally, following my requests that the bushes grow tall and thick to no one would have to see everything on our porch.  After 18 years, the viburnum is well over the top of the porch railing and the laurel out front hides the bottom eight feet of our house.

Working with one of our neighbors who cared deeply about landscaping, Darryl designed the areas and planted the trees and bushes that have filled up Blueberry Hill. This is really why I think of him every day -- I drive past the river birches in front of the Common House, the line of willow oaks along the walkway, the maples in the parking lot islands. Darryl knew how to make things grow. This place is leafy and beautiful.

I think of him every time I go swimming, of course.  He swam so that he could lubricate his creaky joints.  Now that is what I do too.  He limped on his sore ankles. I limp on my sore knees. He would have loved to have a hot tub.  That would have been divine for him.

He used to sit in a chair every CSA day and cheerfully fill bags with chard, making jokes all the time about how wet his pants were and what people would say when he went to the store.  His answer, always, when someone asked him how he was:  "I don't have any choice now, do I?" But he meant that in a positive way, that he was alive and here.

The room we built for Darryl is now under-utilized, but it is meant to be my mother's painting studio. She probably uses it more than I realize.  The sign that Darryl posted outside says "New Shop Annex Studio," referring to the original name of the spot that his room now occupies.  There used to be a Shop (where things got fixed) and then there was a New Shop and then there was an annex on the New Shop -- or maybe I am confused and the New Shop Annex was all one thing. Anyway, that room was his haven during the last years of his life. Cozy and dry and separate from all other activities. But too close to the pig pen for him.

Darryl left a bunch of legacies in addition to all the plantings.  The shade cloth on the greenhouse, the Gravely tractor, the Loudoun farm (he located the property for my parents back when he was a real estate guy), the garden spaces in front of the stand, the funky table outside my mother's house that is positioned so she can set things down when she opens the front door, his son Philip who still brings by piles of reject goodies from his place of work.  Some of us remember everything about the way he moved and talked, swore and laughed.  And some people don't. But he is wrapped around so many pieces of our lives that it is hard to miss him, even if you never knew him.