When she gardened, Lucy wore a straw hat, a flowered dress, and her red boots, which still have the place of honor to the right of the front door. She smiled and sang while she worked. She was a master gardener, everyone said so, and her garden is one of her legacies.

Lucy is why my mother and my aunts love flowers, too. They loved their mother. If she wasn’t having a bad day, or a bad week, where she would cry and moan under the covers of her bed with the lights off, she would hug them, sing to them, and make up intricate fairy tales. She did not get meals on the table. She did not do housework, she would disappear for days on end in the woods, she would swim naked in the middle of the day with others around, and she believed she could heal people with a touch.

“She would pick bouquets for people all over the island,” my mom told me. “Dad would drive her around to deliver them to people in need. She said she looked for people who needed a smile. She would put on a flowered dress and a tutu and sparkling glitter on her face and tell everyone she was the flower fairy.”

“When Gene Sheldt lost his wife, she brought him flowers each week for two months,” Aunt Iris said.

“When Jory Lefts was ill, same thing,” Aunt Camellia said. “For months.”

“When Abigail’s husband left her with three kids, she brought the little girls each a bouquet every Tuesday all summer.”

Everyone loved her. She may have been on the mental health spectrum somewhere, but the spectrum was a generous, kind spectrum.

“There was not a drop of unkindness in her,” Aunt Camellia told me.

“It’s why everyone loved her, everyone took care of her, and us,” my mother said. “The neighbors often brought us meals. Cookies. Pies. Cakes. They wanted to help. Mom would greet them at the door in a princess dress and wand, welcome them in, hold their hands, smile.”

“That’s why the three of us were never teased in school about her,” Aunt Iris said. “Even when she would walk to town naked with one of our dogs on a leash.”

“Even when she wore wings,” my mother said.

After high school, one by one, they all left for college. In fact, they were in college when their mother took a flying leap off a cliff. They have all told me how guilty they felt: If they had stayed on the island, would their mother have jumped? Probably not, they thought. And the guilt never left.

“She loved us, we knew that,” my mother said. “Was it so hard to bear, having all her girls gone, that she couldn’t stand it anymore? Could she not endure the battle in her head any longer? I have cried during a hundred black nights trying to answer that question.”

“Guilt has plagued my soul,” my aunt Camellia said. “My soul will never be able to remove that stain of responsibility in leaving her, of abandoning her, of not being there for her each day, when I knew she was ill.”