On November 4, 1947, seventy-one years ago, a young Bill Dixon and Willie Hodges went to the parsonage of Boone Methodist Church with their good friends, Ray and Thelma Hallman. And there, the Rev. Joseph Shackford married the two whose families were friends before they were born, even though they lived some 75 miles apart– a great distance in those days. 
This is one of my favorite pictures of them, young and in love. Daddy must have been home on leave early in his time in the Navy (based on the single stripe on his sleeve patch; later ones have three stripes); Mother was a nursing student at Shelby Hospital, just down the street from the Dixon family home. When my Granddaddy Hodges took her to school that first time, he told Papaw and Grandma Dixon to “take care of her.” And the rest… well, that brings us back to November 4, 1947 and a marriage that lasted until “death did them part.”
So, what do dahlias have to do with it? In the overall scheme of things, not so much. But then again, so very much. The story of the dahlias is an example of the love between my parents.
Their 37 years together were not perfect but they were definitely a team. They worked hard to give us– my sister, my brother and me– a good life. One thing they loved to do together was garden. We (and by we I mean mostly they!) always had a big vegetable garden. For a few years they planted strawberries. They ventured briefly into Christmas trees. And always there were flowers. From the glorious red amaryllis that Mother always managed to produce in the bleakest of Boone winters to the enormous Christmas cactus that Daddy kept going for nearly 30 years after her death to the daffodils all over the back yard. For some reason (well, besides the fact that people simply did not take as many pictures as we do now– isn’t digital photography amazing?!) we don’t have lots of pictures of Mother’s flowers. 
This photograph of Linda (age 11) and me (almost 8) with Mother, all wearing dresses she made, shows the window box Daddy made for her, full of sultanas or, as they are now called, impatiens.
At some point, Mother started planting dahlias. Over time, her collection of dahlia tubers grew and grew. Dahlias are pretty easy to grow and they produce spectacular blooms, from tiny to dinner-plate sized. The hard part, if you live in places like Boone, is that they are perennials and must be dug and stored over the winter. Have a half dozen or so plants, no big deal. But in 1984, Mother’s last summer as a gardener, she and Daddy had planted bushels of dahlia tubers. Yes, bushels. They were growing in a long, thick row near their vegetable garden on Doe Ridge, a few miles outside of town.
In early fall, Mother became ill and by the end of September, 1984, after a series of unfortunate events (another story for another day, perhaps) she was in the hospital, unresponsive, and would not come home again. After a week or so, we all had to return to our new normal lives. Daddy went back to work, but he spent most of his waking time outside of work at her bedside. He “visited” her before work, took a sandwich in and ate lunch beside her, and was there until bedtime almost every night.
As winter approached, he took time off from his vigil to go up on the mountain to dig the dahlias. During this time, we all still held out hope that she would recover. We were saving papers and magazines, knowing she would want to catch up on what she had missed. We talked to her, hoping against hope that she could hear us. I took my firstborn, a three-month-old when she entered the hospital, to visit and told them about each other. So Daddy knew he needed to get those dahlias dug, so that the two of them could plant them again in the spring.
So dig he did. Remember, we are taking about bushels of tubers! He spread them out on newspapers to dry a bit before he stored them. Then he returned to Mother’s bedside, no doubt telling her what he had done. And then there was a sudden, unexpected freeze before he got back up there to pack them away. And the dahlias were gone. Frozen. All that work. All that HOPE.
There were many poignant moments during that long ten months, but somehow this one resonated with me. Not the most. Like I said, there are many…. but the image of him digging alone, on the mountain they both loved, doing something for her when there was so little he could do….
I don’t know why it took me so long, because this memory never left me, but it was not until nearly thirty years later, the spring after Daddy died, that I planted my own dahlias. I built (from a kit) a raised bed, filled it with bagged dirt, and planted dahlias.
I watched and I waited. They sprouted. And grew. And bloomed! I was amazed and gratified. The blossoms were as beautiful as I recalled. And for several years, they returned and so did the pleasure they brought me.
Here in Lewisville, the weather is a bit more temperate than it is in Boone. But it still gets cold, sometimes really cold. I carefully layered pine needles or mulch. On the coldest nights, I put down quilts and blankets. But the last two winters, while I was living in Ocracoke, there were some really cold spells and I was not here to protect the garden. This summer only one little plant emerged, with only a couple of small blossoms.
Still beautiful. Still a reminder of my parents and, especially, of his devotion to her in that final year of her life.
When spring comes again, I will plant more dahlias. And this time they will be sharing the flower bed with daffodils transplanted from our home in Boone, bulbs that at one time Mother herself planted. And I will remember. Love.
bethdlayton 