ABSTRACT
When Mom died, Dad held the fort, but he began to plant tulips around it—tulips on the high plains, where cactus used to grow. "Yes," we assured each other, "he has the will to live." We ignored his inability to stay at home. When I was a kid, Dad taught me to sing, "Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam." Though we never said so, we all knew there was no such place anymore. For me, Mom's absence was there among the tulips. For Dad, it was everywhere. He felt sorry for himself and confessed to frequent depression. Gray and rainy days got him down. Before her death, he had hardly noticed the weather even though he had been a farmer. His loneliness was palpable, but we marveled at his new burst of willpower. He gave up smoking. On innumerable previous occasions he had insisted that he was unable to stop. He never said so, but I think he wondered whether his smoking had been the cause of Mom's lung cancer.
