We have several gardenia bushes that produce fragrant clusters of tender white blossoms every year from about the middle of May until the end of June. Although gardenias are hardy plants, the snowy petals that form their flowers are very delicate and don’t retain their original shape or bright white color very long. But if you catch them early in their blooming cycle, you can create a stunning bouquet that will fill a room with delicate beauty and a sweet perfume that only gardenias can create.

Last week as I was walking past one of our gardenia bushes, I noticed three random white blossoms nestled among the leaves, in stark defiance of the ordinary rhythm of the seasons. It was such an unexpected – and welcome – surprise I immediately cut one of the blossoms and put it in a vase in our dining room so I could admire its rebellious spirit and enjoy the lingering fragrance. My little gardenia flower was a visual and aromatic souvenir of a Spring gone by. Out of season, but still beautiful.

I thought about those out-of-season gardenia blossoms when I received an email this week from a dear family friend named Cal, who had just visited my Aunt Marie at the nursing home where she is living in Queens, New York. As I wrote in a previous blog post, “A Nun’s Habit”, Aunt Marie is my father’s youngest sibling. She joined the convent at the age of 14 and became a highly accomplished educator, administrator and leader among women and men. She was transferred to a nursing home in New York when the convent where she was living in Connecticut could no longer meet her health care needs. Cal has been my aunt’s best friend for nearly 50 years.

In her email, Cal shared how painful it was to discover how much my Aunt Marie had declined since her last visit: “It hurt to learn that my best friend who has such a brilliant mind and was always loving and compassionate is no longer aware”.

The witty conversation, the thoughtful insights and genuine interest in others were gone. Cal described my aunt as a shell of the person she had been just a few months ago. Like a gardenia bush whose blossoms had fallen off. She was still there, but without the unique color and fragrance that defined her as the person we had all grown to know and love over the course of her life.

As difficult as it was to face the reality of Aunt Marie’s decline, Cal did acknowledge she could see traces of the woman she used to know when she took her out into the garden and observed the way Aunt Marie reacted to flowers that were blooming or the way she engaged with strangers who crossed their path.

Like my random, out-of-season gardenia blossoms, Cal caught small glimpses of the brilliant educator and mentor my Aunt Marie used to be. But the layers of nuance and personality that defined her as a devoted Catholic nun, friend, aunt, and sister to my father and my Aunt Alice – had faded from view.

For Cal, those moments of clarity and cognizance were bright and fragrant. But like my out-of-season gardenia blossoms, she knew they were not the promise of new season of flowering. Just a fleeting souvenir of the person Aunt Marie used to be. Random flowers from a Spring gone by.

Dementia is an unspeakably cruel disease. It tends to feast on the best parts of the people we love – the bright and fragrant blossoms. But a gardenia bush without its signature white flowers is still a gardenia bush. And my Aunt Marie is still an inspiration to me and many others in the way she lived a humble life of service, harnessing her intellectual brilliance and ambition to help others grow. She may not remember the individuals or their specifics, but the people whose lives she impacted will never forget her and they are better off because of her influence.

I am so glad I stopped to pick that gardenia blossom off the bush last week. It is still fading in a vase on my dining room table, but it has been a daily reminder of the shortness of our seasons. And the importance of cherishing the people in our lives – and blossoming with gusto while we still can.

In season and out of season.

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Genesis 8:22