For Kay, my sister- in- law- who is one year gone.
It was summer in Omaha,
and Kay asked for one thing—
a tomato
from Vic’s garden.
She wanted it warm,
straight from the vine,
with the sun still clinging to its skin.
Vic brought it to her—
not sliced, not salted,
just whole and perfect,
as if it had bloomed
for that moment alone.
She bit into it,
closed her eyes,
and let the sweetness fill her
as though taste
could be a kind of farewell.
But it wasn’t about the tomato.
It never was.
It was about the life they grew together—
seasons layered in soil,
laughter and grief shared across years,
a marriage slow-tended
like roots in Midwest clay.
To Lynn,
she was a sister in the oldest sense—
not chosen, but given,
not claimed, but known.
They were two halves
of the same long story:
childhood secrets,
shared closets,
inside jokes no one else understood.
In each other, they found
a mirror, a keeper,
a voice that never had to explain itself.
She was not just loved—
she was her person.
To Jim and Gerri,
she was more than a sister—
she was a second mother,
a summer refuge,
a sure voice in the rooms
where childhood felt too loud.
She fed him—
not just with food,
but with steadiness.
She taught by example:
how to listen,
how to hold joy gently,
how to forgive
without needing thanks.
And now—
a year later—
Vic no longer sleeps
in the home they filled together.
The house still stands,
but today
its drawers are open,
the doors propped wide,
as strangers walk through
and touch her things.
There’s an estate sale.
The overstuffed chair,
the blue dish from her mother’s shelf,
the cookbooks
with penciled notes in the margins—
all out for bidding.
It’s the right thing.
And it still hurts.
Grief isn’t one great thunderclap.
It’s the sound of a tomato vine drying out,
the creak of a cabinet emptied,
the blue painter’s tape
on a box that says “Miscellaneous.”
But still—
in some corner of the yard,
a seed from a past harvest missed,
a vine leans on a bend and forgotten wire cage,
not quite ready to be uprooted.
One last tomato ripens there,
quiet, untouched.
Vic won’t pick it.
But he’ll see it today
and remember the way
she reached for it,
as if sunlight belonged to her,
and the world had given her
this small, red mercy.
Even now,
when the house is full of footsteps
and goodbye sounds like bubble wrap—
we remember.
Because love doesn’t vanish.
It disperses.
It hangs in the air
like the scent of tomato vines
in the Nebraska sun.
It lingers
in the touch of a dish,
in the hum of old recipes,
in the way we notice the sweetness
of a thing just before it’s gone.
And even when the garden is quiet,
the last tomato remains—
full of her,
warm from the past,
still ripening
in all of us.
