Legacy
Each bunch of grapes I snip from the vine makes me smile. Jack would so have loved this bounty.
When we bought the property, he rushed over to the house he’d shared with his ex-wife and kids to excavate his grape vine before his ex sold the property. He lovingly planted the vine at the back of our property, amid dozens of overgrown raspberry canes and weeds - many, many weeds all signs of the osteoporosis that had plagued the once-good bones of this yard. Jack was confident he could build those bones back. I watched with awe and a touch of skepticism. The task daunted my gardening-newbie hands.
In the early years, the grape grew a little up the wooden climbing apparatus Jack gave it. No blooms - just slow growing greenery. It frustrated him. It was like some internal clock of his was ticking down the years and he wanted to live to see grapes. He spoke often of a gazebo he would build at the back where the grape would have space to take off. Again, I met his dreaming with skepticism. A backyard gazebo shouldn’t jump the queue ahead of windows, roof, electrical, furnace, and countless other priorities. Work before pleasure - always.
Then came Jack’s 2016 cancer diagnosis. I resisted any changes to the house; the last thing I wanted was half-finished renovations if his health made a sharp turn in the wrong direction. As-is was fine, including the overgrown backyard. Jack still blue-skied about a gazebo to support his grape, as it inched skyward every year, soon to outgrow its little trellis.
We got through that year and the next - just leaving things as is. By late 2017, Jack had sold his shop and had some funds to build a new garage at the back of the property, close to the grape. At the same time, his health was failing, not with any known cause - yet. With the urgency of a first-time parent preparing for a new life, Jack started pushing the list of home-work. The garage went up in record speed and with it, a lean-to kit from Rona, extended with a wooden arbour and surrounded by a gently curved 18 inch tall stone wall. The gazebo he dreamed of was reality. The grape now had room to expand in all directions but was stubbornly still inching. Other projects followed - windows, roof, basement reno, furnace, water heater. As Jack became sicker, the pace quickened, him overseeing what he could no longer do himself.
Resting in the gazebo, Jack remarked one day “You may want to get another grape for the other corner so they can meet in the middle.” By now he knew he wasn’t going to be making these decisions but was gently guiding future widowed me. He looked at his baby grape vine and imagined it continuing its very slow but steady progress.
One day a friend, Eve, was visiting and said “Jack, you have grapes!” We all stood marvelling at a bunchlette of four tiny green grapes tucked under the gazebo arbour. We each took one and enjoyed the sweet and tartness of it. Heaven.
The summer after Jack died, the grape bore almost no fruit, using its energy instead to take hold properly in its expanded space, motoring the length of the arbour and skyward too. No need for Jack’s suggested companion at the other end — it was going to fill the space all by itself.
COVID summer #1 produced a big crop of grapes. Each week or so, I gently squeezed one, waiting for the moment when it would give in a way the suggested sweetness lay inside. Not ready - rock hard. Not ready - a bit softer. Not ready - gentle give but mouth puckering when I tasted it. Then I came out one day - all gone, but for three grapes tucked inside a hanging plant pot. Rotters (birds, squirrels, who knows) missed those three and I enjoyed their juices, annoyed though to have missed the full harvest.
COVID summer #2 and I’m cannier. The crop even bigger, I have checked more regularly. Very little attrition from my fruit-loving competitors, and today, I have picked them all, each little bunch a reminder of how we have it all wrong. Many people spend their lives amassing financial wealth to leave to their families when they die. No amount of money could replace the pleasure of watching Jack’s grapes from bloom to fruit. Sitting in “the gazebo” (because while not a gazebo in the conventional sense, it is now and will forever be Jack’s gazebo) is exponentially more important than any material thing he might have left. Jack left me the foundation for a happy life.
