When I was a kid, she promised me
the biggest Christmas cactus I had ever seen
as a gift for my wedding day.
“Just wait and see,” said she.

Someday when you’re grown, and have fallen
deep in love, this cactus will be yours.
“Grandma, how old is it?” I asked.
“Don’t really know,” she chuckled. “At least forty years.”

That was old to me, really, really old
and I couldn’t imagine a plant that old.
But it was Grandma’s and it would be for me.
I wondered if it would wait for me.

A few years passed, and she told me yet again,
“this cactus is for you on your wedding day.”
I looked at it lovingly, thinking with awe at how much it had grown…
as if it were waiting for me.

More years passed, and the teenaged me
came to look at that plant, and again Grandma assured me
of its final destination–
a place near and dear to me. My heart.

My twenties came quickly, but there was no wedding day,
at least not yet, but the cactus waited for me anyway.
I would look at it and wonder, “how in the world will I ever get it out of this room?”
It was so huge, and seemed rooted to that spot.

My thirties came, and by this time, the pact was forgotten,
but one of us still remembered and still wondered how that plant would ever
be moved. It was ebbing a bit now, not flourishing as it once did.
Grandma was forgetting to take care of it. Yet, still it waited.

Then the smoke came, from a broken furnace, and the house full of black soot.
Grandma had to move out while the house cleaners did their job.
For several weeks she lived with my parents, and when we finally went to her home
the first thing I saw was my wedding gift thrown out into the snow.

My Christmas cactus no longer waited. It’s waiting days were done,
I had spent a lifetime waiting for a plant that was never to come.
All of her houseplants were gone, except for one, which was wilting on a counter-top,
far from any window.

I took a couple snips from it, the healthiest of the remaining stems, and put them in water.
For some reason, I just couldn’t bear to take Grandma’s whole plant. It would be like stealing.
But a snip or two she wouldn’t mind at all.
That snip or two grew roots.

And soon I was planting them in soil, and now it sits in a new pot, and a new window in a new home,
not too far away from the old one. There it sits, and there it flourishes.
There it waits.
Perhaps there will be an event in the future of Grandma’s last plant. Perhaps not.

But at least something survived.