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Alice Longbottom does not remember anything. She smiles, a vacant, empty smile. She frowns – a frown without purpose or meaning. She never laughs. She has nothing to laugh about. She has no joy left to give, for she has given it all. Now she waits, though she does not know what she waits for.

Sometimes her son comes in and holds her hand. She does not recognize him, does not know that this is the child she held in her arms so many years ago, but somehow his presence comforts her.

She tries to give him something to thank him for that comfort, but she finds that she has nothing to give. (There was a time when she thought the entire world was nestling in her heart, waiting to spring out.) He looks at her, both tender and awkward, his hand warm around hers. When he leaves she sits alone, trying with all that is in her to remember.

Sometimes vague words from another life will float through her consciousness and she will reach out to grasp them, but it is like trying to catch a rainbow. (Once she believed that every rainbow led to a pot of gold.) Even if she could catch them, the words mean nothing to her anymore.

Here’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.

Once (when all the world was colored in brightness, and the rising of the sun in the morning meant a new day) she planted a garden with the man she loved best in the world. It was their defiance of the darkness that surrounded them, their hope for the future. As her child grew within her body she knelt on the cool earth of the garden and promised her son that there would be a world (shining, golden bright) for him to live in. She gave her life to keep that promise. Now she sits trapped in her dark, grey world, which starts over every day and yet is every day the same.

And there are pansies. They are for thoughts.

As the shadows pressed closer to their lives, she feared for her promise. When the flowers began to wither, she pressed them in the pages of an old book. Just in case, she said. She saved them for her son so that he might see them someday, even if all the flowers in the world should die. (Once she would have said that there could be no world without flowers, but she has learned differently now.) She labeled them, in case they were forgotten. Rosemary, she wrote. Pansies. Fennel. These are for you. Do not forget. Only the last page of the book is empty. Though it is labeled neatly at the bottom, she never had a chance to pick the violets.

There’s fennel for you, and columbines.

She has forgotten them now – only the words remain, and they mean nothing to her. She can no longer see the garden, nor remember the flowers that she saved so carefully for her son. But somewhere out there in the world she has lost, her son opens the book and finds them. They are flat and faded now, the color seeped away by the passing of the years. (Flowers were not meant to live forever. Neither was she.) He runs his finger across the yellowed pages, tracing the words his mother wrote so long ago. He whispers their names under his breath, trying to remember the last time he saw a flower.

There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We call it herb-grace o’Sundays. You must wear your rue with a difference.

There are pictures of her dancing, with flowers in her hair. (Here, at least, she will smile forever.) Her son walks through the old house (the house his mother thought would be haunted by their very happiness) and into the garden in the back. It is a forgotten place – after his mother forgot, there was no one else to remember it. It is overgrown now, and the flowers have died.

There’s a daisy.

Only the wind blows through the bushes and moves the grass. It makes a queer, murmuring noise, and he fancies – as she did – that it is the sound of the trees speaking to one another. He strains his ears for a moment, but cannot make out the words. He imagines they are whispering of the girl who once danced in their presence. It hurts to think that every one has forgotten, but even more to think that she has forgotten – that she does not remember this garden, nor the flowers that she planted to give to him.

I would give you violets, but they all withered…

Then he turns and catches a flash of color at the edge of the garden. Kneeling down in the cool, damp earth, he moves aside the leaves to see a clump of violets. (She used to think that she would travel to the end of the earth to find a violet.)

Alice Longbottom does not remember anything. She smiles, a lost, helpless smile, and frowns an empty, thoughtless frown. She never laughs. But her son comes in to visit her, smelling of spring and sunshine, and he brings her violets. Even in the middle of winter, he gives her violets. And he holds her hand, and remembers for her.