COMMON GROUND is the story of three ordinary people struggling to rekindle a sense of purpose and meaning back into their lives after each loses a loved one.

Edna Hill, with the help of her dead husband’s hidden notes, gifts, and promises, finds a new voice and courage after the age of 70. Her longtime, outspoken friend, Beaulah Delaney, remarries and reinvents her family farm and herself, only to lose a second husband. With their quirky but insightful Biblical interpretations, they eventually establish their own hybrid church. A constant in both women’s life is former-teacher and handyman Nathan Walker whose brief love affair with Beaulah’s son, Seth, before he is killed in one of the undeclared American wars, forces a new and simple understanding of family, love, religion, and heritage.

Picket Fence

It really started with the white picket fence.

It was the first of her husband’s many “projects” after retirement. It framed the front flower garden that ran parallel the length of the sidewalk. There had been much planning and discussion. Drawings and estimates. He cut each picket himself for the exact angle. And for several days she hummed along with the saw as its echo wafted and buzzed from the garage into the kitchen where she gladly prepared lunch.

The garage was his. The kitchen hers.

This retirement was a new arrangement for them both. A kind of test. It was like being married all over again! In he strolled smelling of sweat, forearms covered with sawdust like a bee rolling in pollen. They had lunch together now. Talked of the fence’s progress that drew neighbors and onlookers. Small talk and giggles over iced tea. And then, in the evenings, Long-Island iced teas watered down with ice and even more small talk.

After its construction, several days of painting, he with his white-washed brush thrust in the air all Tom-Sawyer like. All literary and relaxed. Senatorial. But, unlike newlyweds, they had already mastered the knowledge of boundaries and fences. The interpretation of silences. And needs.

So when her son-in-law said, “Edna, the fence needs to be replaced, it’s rotting,” she felt an immediate resistance. Since her husband’s death, he had assumed financial responsibilities for her. For the most part, she welcomed the counsel. But when he said, “It should be replaced with PVC, it will last longer and needs less upkeep,” she had to bite her tongue. “It will be easier and cheaper than custom and better for re-sale,” he tried to reason.

He read her disappoint, knew it even beforehand because of her anathema to unnatural things like plastic and nylon carpeting. Tupperware wasn’t allowed in her refrigerator. Or paper plates. “Paper is for wrapping, reading, wiping, and flushing,” she lectured. “Not for eating off of.”

“You won’t even know the difference,” he tried to reassure her about the new fence.

But of course she would. The difference was that it was another thing of her dead husband gone. And then the business of “re-sell.” She wasn’t dead yet.

She went out to see for herself. Examined the rotting posts, the carpenter ants munching away as happily as she and her husband had during all the lunches of its construction and future projects. The peeling paint. But it had a charm and character all its own. A beautiful green moss stained the lower part of each picket. The gate sagged and no longer fastened securely without coaxing. “There is beauty in decay,” she surmised.

The thought stayed with her the entire day. “I’m old and decaying like the fence,” she chuckled to herself. “But I go on.”

Usually it was her husband who said simple but thoughtful things, usually under his breath. She wished now she could remember every single one. Had written them down. So, later that day before bed and just after her tea, she rummaged in the drop-front desk for an old cloth-bound journal printed with pink roses and blue forget-me-nots. She tore out the first few pages containing addresses and phone numbers of people forgotten. Either dead or just gone.

She removed the pen from its case and in her best hand wrote, “There is beauty in decay.” She examined the script and, satisfied, closed the book then the desk front. These would be her secrets. She was discovering that secrets were a part of getting old. One had to be careful. And even give in even when one didn’t want to. If one wanted to remain independent.

She drifted to sleep debating the new fence. Her son-in-law’s words still in her ears: “re-sell.” She was staying put for as long as possible. Preserved by her soon-to-be Tupperware fence. Like a leftover.

She missed the security of her husband next to her. And wondered if birds could perch on a plastic fence rail without sliding off.

Birdhouses

There were times when the loss of her dead husband so overtook her that Edna Hill found it difficult to breathe. Or cry. Its fear seized her suddenly. At odd times. Without warning. Then consumed her for hours.

Following his death, there was the verbiage of death to take up and to fill that emptiness. To stave off the reality of loss. The funeral. Notes and letters. Legal matters and documents. Hospital and doctor bills. These were impersonal duties that kept her occupied for months.

His long illness had given her time to think of being alone. She had to be practical, of course. Think of her own future, what little was left. But then she had to clear his memory. Literally. Open closets and drawers. Suits. Socks. Ties. Personal items that unlocked parts of her psyche she tried to suppress. Then repress.

The bathroom was the most difficult. Scents of hair oils. Deodorants. Shaving cream. Scents that released the floodgates of memories. His favorite black comb with strands of gray hair. Vials of pills and medicines. Each prescription filled with hope. Now she flushed them down the toilet.

For weeks after his death, she slept in the spare-room bed where her husband had spent his last days. Curled fetal-like into the mattress depression to try to cure her own.

She cleaned and shopped. Spent time with friends. Ate dinner with the television on just for the company even though such a custom had never been allowed in their household. “We converse with each other as a family,” he had always said. But now there was no one.

When she left the house to run errands, she kept the radio tuned in. It was easier to enter the emptiness with voices instead of returning to a dead silence she knew wouldn’t be filled once the door closed behind her.

He had died in the autumn, so there was the added burden of first holidays alone. She deliberately ignored the pain of Christmas decorating, opening box after box of stored memories. Put up a simple wreath instead. A few lights. So the family pitched in. Everyone together. Strength in numbers to numb the loss. During grace, her grandson ended with “Hi, Grandpa!” It was so unexpected, but welcomed, and everyone cheered the words in unison. Tears wiped away with napkins amid the clatter of silverware and small talk. His presence still felt.

But when they all left, the silence and the stillness drained her. Longer days of darkness. And cold. She worried he wasn’t warm enough in the casket. Then chastised herself for such silliness.

She began to talk to herself.

So when spring arrived, longer days and warmth, it brought a certain calm and acceptance. “You’re a widow and that’s that!” she mused to herself.

She hadn’t touched the garage all winter. His place. But weather dictated otherwise. Outside chores of needing rake, trowel, pruning shears. He kept everything organized and neat. Baby jars of screws and nuts. Drawers of wire and string. Pegboards with hooks. Some tools whose use she knew nothing about and whose secrets were known only by men alone in garages on weekends or late at night. What did they do?

And then there were the birdhouses.

They hung from the rafters. Vacant. All lined up and waiting for tenants. Some were as old as the children. Patched and repaired. Coats of peeled paint. One color leading into another. But backwards into the past, like her life. Her life needed a new coat of paint. A new skin.

The wrens were their favorite whose green-and-white house they kept in the pear tree next to the lilacs outside their bedroom window. They figured they had sheltered the same wren family for generations and woke with joy when they heard their first late spring song. “We’re home! We’re home!”

Of course, she’d put a few out, not just for her husband, but for the birds themselves. Why should they suffer a funeral? She shook their favorite and felt a slight rustle. Unlatched the metal hook ready to clean last year’s nest remnants and debris. And then stared, bewildered, at what floated out. A note. With her name. And written in her husband’s hand.

Confused, she walked to the back porch, pulled up a metal chair. Slowly opened its sealed creases.

"My Darling and Beautiful Edna:

If you are reading this, one of several things have happened, the least of which is my own death. Either the kids have raided my tools and possessions or you had a garage sale and someone found this note in our birdhouse and has been kind enough to return it.

My hope is that it is neither. My hope is that it is spring. My hope is that you have already picked several bouquets of yellow daffodils and red tulips. My hope is that the lilacs are blooming. And my hope, Edna, is that you are not sad but content.

As I write this, I know I won’t make it through the winter and, that, for you, it will be your most difficult winter. It pains me to think you must endure it alone. But endure it you will. Your strength has been my pride and inspiration. And the children’s. It has kept our family together.

Oh, Edna, we had such a wonderful life together! We weren’t lucky. We were blessed. Blessed with such a wonderful home and friends. Blessed with each other. Blessed with our children, each so different. I think we raised them well. To respect work and others less fortunate. To respect knowledge and nature. To seek what is new. To always try to do better. And now we must teach them to respect death, too, Edna.

Don’t limit yourself with being a widow. You are still my wife and their mother, so continue, don’t end. Think of your future and not just our past, as wonderful as it was. Teach the grandchildren what we taught their parents. It’s a busy and confusing world now, my darling, and they will need you more than ever, even if they think they don’t.

Put up the birdhouses. Put away the tears. And with each trill of the wren, know that I, too, am singing for you. Oh, Edna, each day I awoke and saw your face was like saying “I Do” all over again. And when next I open my eyes, I hope it is you I see.

You changed the diapers of our children. And, at the end, you changed mine. All marriages begin with love. That’s the easy part. But if they are blessed, like ours was, they end with a lifetime of respect, trust and duty, which transcend love. Know that you are wonderful, loved and needed.

Always, always, always yours. As you are mine.

John"

She was stunned.

She read the letter several times over. Scrutinized the careful writing. Recognized a dried spatter of tears. Wiped away her own.

She refolded it and sat in the spring sun. And for the first time since his death, she didn’t feel so completely alone. She would place the letter where she kept many of her most treasured letters and cards: in the back of one of her cookbooks. The best kind of recipes.

And that night, before going to bed, Edna Hill wrote in the journal with the cover of pink roses and blue forget-me-nots: “Love never dies.” And the next day she told her son-in-law that the new fence would be wood. Not plastic.