Weekly Feature : Reminiscing the 2010 Fall Retreat

So every Monday we'll be posting a picture and reflection paper from our 2010 Fall Retreat to Sts. Peter and Paul Chapel. We went to the chapel during Labor Day weekend for staff bonding, training, and overall fun.

Enjoy!

- The Blogsters

This piece is by one of the current Blogsters, Katie Selinger.

The events that take place in this work are fictional, not a real account.

There once was a gardener by the name of Albert Pitlik who lived in the town of Vernon. His favorite specimens were the petunias that grew near in the village green. He was content doing what he loved best: being greeted by the morning sun and studying flora that surrounded him. He was particularly fascinated a purple bush that grew inches away from his favorite reading spot on the hill. He studied and observed this uniquely colored shrub, but nothing seemed to click; he had never before heard of a shrub with such an unusual color. The leaves appeared to be black, but if one approached close enough, there were definitely hues of purple basking in the sun. The leaves were grouped together in a think block, connecting by little brown branches with bark turning green. They held the plant ever so tightly, much like a weaved blanket on a loom. One day as he decided to get away from the teasing mystery of the bush he lost his favorite bookmark.

“Why don’t I use a pressed leaf from the bush?” He optimistically reached around the bush and found beside it a fair young lady in a light blue dress.

“I’m Barbara,” she said as she noticed Albert, who looked quite red. “I study the insects that live beside this bush.” She paused as she saw a hawk slicing through the blue sky with its proud dark wings. “And who might you be?”

“Uh,”Albert swallowed hard for his voice somehow became very stuck. “I-I’m Albert. I read on this hill, but I’m a gardener you see, so I wanted to find out what this fascinating bush is and also find my favorite bookmark. I-I-I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s white with a painting of a wild rose,”

“I see,” said Barbara with an interested brow. “I haven’t found your bookmark, good sir, but I have a question for you.” Albert swallowed in anxiety as if he had to take a foul-tasting medicine.

“W-What’s that?”

“Have you found out what the meaning of the bush is yet?”

“I believe its,” Albert stammered as his fingers trembled like melting icicles and his legs became pillars of jelly. “This bush has told me that I have found my first love.”

And that is how it all began: the love and marriage of Albert and Barbara Pitlik. When Albert was recruited for the war, Barbara sent him letters and occasionally enclosed leaves and flowers that she had discovered. When Albert returned home, they were still right as rain despite having very little. But then came the dark time when the flu epidemic swept through the town, snatching Barbara right under Albert’s feet. That summer was very dismal for Albert, who felt so alone without his beloved friend and wife.

Years later on an August morn, he quietly wrote his will and tucked it in an envelope with the research that he and Barbara had compiled together over the years and left it all in the names of their children, Anna and Joseph. Among the dying streets, he quietly and silently took his life for he couldn’t bear the burden of the things that he had witnessed over the years: the stuff of war, grief and sadness. But the truth of the matter was that he longed for nothing more than to be embraced in Barbara’s gentle arms once again.

Barbara and Albert loved many of the things they discovered together, one of which was a rather unique, lemon-green moss. You may find this moss alongside the majestic grey stone where both Albert and Barbara’s name hide themselves in the shade and only emerge when the sun hits the tombstone just right. The stone itself stands proudly against the whispering trees and the bright sun upon the very same hill where Albert occasionally read his favorite books. For every day the sun still shines its warmth down upon the grass that always stays green and moist with the morning dew. But if you look closely, you will find that they are above a purple bush, the very same one when they first met.