Today I was taking a nap and heard the doorbell ring. As I opened the door, a white car pulled out of the driveway. On a little wrought iron table sitting beside the front door’s stoop sat a Mason jar filled with water and a bunch of wild flowers, all tied in light blue ribbon. A note was propped against it. Gently opening the long blue envelope, I stood in the warm sunshine and read:

Dear Betsy,

I must apologize. This delivery is long overdue. I can’t remember exactly but I think it was 1995 or ’96  that I was first asked to deliver these flowers.

I’ve ignored the requests over the years and for that I am sorry. Now I’m more open to doing what is asked of me without fear of being misunderstood, or fear of causing you pain, as I believe a message of love is too important not to share.

So I cannot claim to have heard Elizabeth’s personal voice but repeatedly over these years I have been very specifically asked to gather you wild flowers from around the small pond back in the field through the woods of Weston towards Melrose. The small pond, not the large new one. I have been told to tie them in a pale blue ribbon. Sometimes it seems I have been asked to put them in a basket, other times a Mason jar. I have been asked to deliver them to you with the message “You are Loved.” I tried to ignore this voice forever because it was all too unexpected. It did always feel authentic to me because this message would pop into my head at the most random of times as if I did not generate the thought myself. I would then forget the whole idea entirely only to have the request brought to me again. It was initially suggested I take my pony to gather these flowers. I waited too long and now the land has been sold so I gathered these locally as best I could to go along with the request that so patiently has been brought to me over and over. If the message only came once I have no doubt I would have brushed it off.

I hope you like the flowers and the love they are meant to show to you. I hope they bring you a sense of how much a daughter can love a mother. If this was out of line for me to do or share with you, please know my intentions are good-hearted. I would be filled with regret if someday, beyond this life, Elizabeth asked me why I didn’t carry out her request.

So I don’t really believe these come from me but they come with great love,

J

I called J to thank her and she said, “As I was driving away I got mad at myself. I thought you would be offended because I used the wrong name for Caroline in my letter, but she kept coming across to me all these years as Elizabeth. I’m so sorry.” She was amazed when I told her that her childhood playmate and my precious daughter, Caroline Elizabeth, changed her name to Elizabeth before she died in 1995.