A Great Nilda Story

When my grandmother died, we all gathered for a real celebration of her life. One good thing about wakes and funerals is that we often get to hear stories about the person who has passed that we did not know before. At Nilda's wake, her long time employee, (around 40 years) Joey Moreschi, came to the wake with his wife with a handful of flowers wrapped in tin foil. I said, "Joey, what are those flowers? Let me get you a vase." And he told me this: Many years ago, in the early years of Edenwald Contracting, the construction company my grandparents started in the 1940's in New York City, Joey went to a garden center with my grandmother to help her pick out plants and flowers for her home in Scarsdale, NY. He always did the plantings at her home each Spring and pretty much helped her do just about anything that needed doing at her home with George Follini, my grandfather. They walked around the garden center and picked out her favorite things and she asked him, just for fun, if there was anything here you would like, what would it be? He said, that magnolia, which was a rare and very expensive tree back in those days. The next day it was delivered to his house as a gift from her. This was the kind of thing Nilda did all the time. So 40 years later, Joey shows up at her funeral with the blossoms from that now mature tree, which happened to be blooming at the time of her death. PERFECT!