At this time of year, my former beautiful garden in my former home appears as random pop-up memories on Facebook as it did yesterday. It startles, a poignant but at times painful reminder of the beauty I created, nurtured, and lost, though I hardly need a reminder.

But it was a random email I got the other day that truly startled me.

The email began  “Picture Yourself Living Here.” The familiar address and image were heart-stopping. It was an email from Zillow inviting me on a tour of my former home. The house I lost in foreclosure is now for sale by its new owners, only 2 years later.

If they only knew how often I “picture myself living there.”

Wouldn’t You Like To Live Here

My garden once grounded me.

It is lilac season now, and I deeply long for mine. As I walk with Moe through my neighborhood, the sweet, distinctive scent wafting from the neighbor’s lilacs transports me back with an aching wistfulness to the dozens that dotted the landscape at my former home.

I miss stepping out my front door this time of year onto the porch, the air perfumed by the heady amalgam of lilacs, viburnum, and roses surrounding the entrance.

The 46 pictures that accompanied the real estate listing beckoned me to view them but I hesitated, knowing it would be opening a Pandora’s box.

Because I already knew my lush garden and entire landscape had been destroyed.

All my plant life had suffered the same fate as I did. They were all uprooted.

The new owners had ripped out and discarded every flowering shrub, bush, stately trees, and colorful perennials, so that it was just a barren scape.

It was one thing to lose my garden, another to know it was destroyed.

Last year, a chance encounter with my former neighbor proved painful. I had not seen her since I moved, and the first thing she blurted out was that the new owners had ripped out everything that had been planted. It was a massacre. Quickly, I told her I didn’t want to know. Could not bear to know. Yet her descriptive words came out in torrents, and I heard it all.

Until now, I have not been able to speak about it.

Until now, I chose never to see it.

But the Zillow emails got the better of me, and I looked at the pictures in the listing.

I wept at all the life that had been ripped out, the decades of care that had gone into it, now leaving a barren, lifeless plot of land. Thousands of living specimens gone.

The last Zillow email I got today stated, “Would You Like to Live Here?’

I can’t even begin to answer.