The rooms of my father's house are an empty canvas now. The old carpeting has been uprooted and torn away; the walls washed over in a clean mask of white.

Yet if I listen closely, I can still hear the echoes of his hours here in the weeks before he left this place for the last time: the television's blare to an empty room, the dying shriek of the kettle forgotten on the stove, the mindless beep of an answering machine that received only prerecorded sales calls. I can see the unmade bed and crowded sink — and the dwindling pile of mail.

It's not because this house is so empty now that it has pained me to come inside. It's that it was so empty when it still appeared so full.

For the past 26 years, my summer calendar has included the many visits I had with my parents when they returned from Florida to their summer home in Maine. For the past six and a half years, those occasions included only my dad, and I tried to ensure that there were more of them each week, since my mother's death meant that he was on his own during those intervals in-between.

Three years ago, things took a major turn when he was diagnosed with cancer. And over the last year, whatever relationship I thought I had with time was blurred into that suspended sort of state you live in when someone you love has a terminal illness.

Last fall, it became obvious that my father could no longer live in his house alone, no matter how strong his assertions otherwise. There was absolutely nothing easy about that transition. If it hadn't been for the help of an insightful doctor and a number of social workers and advisers, it wouldn't have happened — and it needed to. And even though it afforded him a much-improved living situation afterward, I still wound up feeling like some sort of culprit or accomplice.

Last month, I had the chance to see just how wonderful that new living situation had been for him. After four months of life there, months that had been far more companionable than any hours in his deteriorating home could ever have been, he entered the final weeks of his life. As I kept him company, I had the privilege of watching a dozen staff members come in to take tender care of him, and to wish him well on his journey. All that week, these folks who had truly loved as well as cared for him, mirrored back to him his own virtues of generosity and kindness, helping him to "pack his spiritual bags." There were days when I couldn't tell whether I was crying more for my own loss or for theirs.

There was grace for me, as well, through the agency of hospice's help, and because I was sitting right beside my dad on the bed when he took his last breaths. My hand was on his heart as we sent him off with love and praise for the very brave job he had followed through to the very end (a skill he was always eager for me to learn; being brave was important to him, too).

A stubborn Irishman to the core, my father would never have openly admitted that the facility to which he'd moved had brought the right balance of care and companionship that he had truly needed. But I think that, in his way, he showed me the truth of this during that final week. I do know that I've felt less like a culprit since.

When I was finally able to visit his now-empty house again, I felt comforted (and accompanied) as I moved about its rooms quietly reciting prayers, making my final farewells.

Then I looked out the sliders at the back and was nearly bowled over by the brilliance of what was waiting there. Every bush and shrub he'd planted seemed to be in bloom, as if in blatant testimony to the indomitable nature of life itself.

Then I remembered that last bit of gardening we'd done together last year. Dad had a little strip of land against the back of his house in which he'd plant impatiens every year. Last June, I'd spied two big trays of them on his back patio and then realized that, since he could barely walk any longer, there was undoubtedly no way he could plant these himself.

We were quite a team that day, the two of us — plus his ever-eager miniature schnauzer, Patsy, namesake of the saint on whose day she was born. In our curious assembly line, Dad churned up the soil in the beds with a long-handled trowel and I followed behind, nestling those little plants into place. It had just rained, and the job was messy, the mosquitoes thick, and Patsy determined to be right in my face as I hunkered over those beds.

But I knew even then that the task was going to be one of the very last things we'd do together. And, with nature's benevolence, those flowers were still there long into the fall. As soon as I'd remembered them, I knew what we'd need for Dad's funeral.

It was an event fit for the Irishman he was. His all-time favorite waitress from his favorite restaurant gave a moving tribute to the man she called "my oldest friend, and the one who convinced me I needed not to give up on love. And I've finally found it," she said as she held up the new ring on her finger.

My brother-in-law recalled asking Dad for my sister's "hand" 11 years before, to which his future father-in-law had replied, "Go ahead, take all of her. I gave her away, but she keeps coming back."

My husband recalled our 8-year-old son solemnly watching Grampie put together an outdoor grill and being too polite to tell him that he'd assembled a few of its parts upside down. My father had laughed about his grandson's "diplomacy" for years afterward.

After we'd given Dad the best tribute we could, there were little flats of impatiens waiting outside for each guest to take home to plant, since my father won't be gardening this year. I've already had calls from friends and family in four states saying what a good plan this was and how those little flowers will be blooming far and wide this summer.

I can't take any credit for this idea. Sending folks home with flowers was the essence of what my father himself would have done. I know he planted that thought as I was wandering around his condo for that last time, right after he'd made sure that I'd seen that profusion of blooming glory out back.

In a passage very dear to me, the writer counsels someone who has experienced the loss of a loved one that while the pain of physical separation remains for those left behind, for the one who dies, it's as though a wise and kind gardener has transplanted a struggling plant to a wider, more welcoming place where it can reach a whole new level of growth.

Bloom on, Dad. Bloom on.

— — —

Phyllis Edgerly Ring, mother of two, is a writer and editor. Her current book project addresses how adults can recognize and nurture children's spiritual nature. She is a former program director at Green Acre Baha'i School in Eliot, Maine, and has been a member of the Baha'i Faith for more than 30 years. Email her at {email columns@bahai.us}columns@bahai.us{/email}. See the website of the Baha'is of the United States for more information. © copyright 2007 by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.