In these sweltering dogdays of August, I am reminded of a summer over thirty years ago when my wife Debra and I were caring for my half-sister, whom we affectionately referred to as Aunt Mari Lou. Over forty years older than I, she was the first of three elderly relatives to whom we would open our home during our marriage, attending to the needs of each in their dotage. Her arrival proved a major adjustment for our little family, as she came after breaking a hip and required assistance in bathing and dressing. Her memory was starting to fade, and she also could be finicky about what she liked to eat. Neighbors and friends who knew of our new family dynamics often reached out, asking how they could lighten our burden. Usually, we politely declined assistance and stressed that we had professional aides who came a few times a month to address pressing needs. Occasionally, however, someone would offer something that seemed the perfect gift for the moment, as I shall explain hereafter.

A graduate of the University of Arkansas in English and piano performance and a stunning beauty in her youth, Aunt Mari Lou had always appreciated the finer things of life: great literature, classical music, fine art, fashionable clothes, and specialty foods. Throughout her eighty-five years she had especially delighted in flowers—the more colorful, the better. As an artist, she had often fashioned floral arrangements and occasionally used bouquets as the subject of her watercolors. After she came to live with us, an esteemed university colleague and close friend, Dr. Glade Hunsaker, with whom I had team taught college courses, became aware of our home situation and of Aunt Mari Lou’s love of flowers. One hot summer day he called and informed me that his prized zinnias had reached the pinnacle of their perfection. If I would drop by his home early the next day, he would cut one of the largest and most beautiful for Debra and me to present to Aunt Mari Lou. A zinnia, which symbolizes thoughts of friends, goodness, and lasting affection, would certainly brighten our day. I readily accepted and arranged a time when it would be mutually convenient for Debra and me to stop by his house.

At the appointed hour we drove up to the Hunsaker home, and Glade greeted us warmly. An avid gardener, he enthusiastically showed us his manicured flower garden. We were impressed by the intense colors and astounded by the colossal size of his zinnias with their showy flower heads. He chose one of the largest as his gift to Aunt Mari Lou. Several inches in diameter, the flower’s head had not yet opened its petals fully to the morning sun. Glade carefully placed the flower with its long thick stem in a simple plastic container of water and proudly presented it to Debra. He informed us that, as the flower soaked up the water and warmed in the air, its petals would open to display a special surprise: a golden center like a miniature sun. We thanked our thoughtful friend profusely for such a generous gift of self, reassuring him that we would place the flower in one of Aunt Mari Lou’s special vases and present it to her as soon as we returned home. Glade smiled benevolently and with the satisfaction that derives from knowing that a simple act of kindness will bless multiple lives—in this case cheering Aunt Mari Lou and making our day lighter, too.

As we readied ourselves to drive home, Debra elected to sit in the back seat of our compact Toyota Corolla to have enough room to steady the container of water with the glorious zinnia. The interior of the car was hot from sitting in the sun, and with the windows rolled up I turned on the air conditioner and started for home. The combination of water and the car’s heated interior was already contributing to the opening of the zinnia’s colorful petals. As we drove out of Glade’s neighborhood, we seemed to hear a very faint buzzing noise but couldn’t identify its origin. Then, as I sped up the main road to our home on Osmond Lane, pleased that a friend would share such a special gift, I heard a blood-curdling shriek emerge from the back seat. I made out the screamed alliterative word “BUMBLEBEE!!!” Hidden in the golden center of the zinnia was a previously trapped and insanely huge black-and-yellow-striped bumblebee. As I turned my head to see, the furious insect whizzed past my face and bounced off the inside of the front windshield. Debra screamed again as the bee angrily reversed course and zoomed past her toward the rear window, trying desperately to escape the confines of the car. As I tried to avoid contact with the bee, my hands jerked at the steering wheel. I simultaneously fumbled in futile attempts to roll down the car windows. Swatting at the bee and zigzagging back and forth across lanes of oncoming traffic, I appeared to be an inebriated kamikaze pilot on a suicide mission.

In an instant there flashed through my mind Glade’s benevolent face and self-satisfied smile when we had backed out of his driveway two minutes before. I thought how content he must have been based on his altruistic act of kindness. I contemplated that if we crashed head-on into an approaching car and perished, the bumblebee would escape through a broken window, and no one would ever fathom the true reason for what seemed to be the successful execution of a death wish. Ironically, Glade would be comforted that his last act before I inexplicably crashed my car was the bestowal of one of his special zinnias on an ostensibly deeply troubled colleague. He might even offer to speak at our funerals and relate his final selfless act.

With those thoughts wildly racing through my mind and my wife still screaming hysterically, I pulled over and stopped the car. We rolled down all the windows and waited expectantly for the bumblebee to exit. To our amazement he chose to remain in attack mode against the car’s rear window. Debra finally swatted him with something she found in the back seat, and the bee fell dead (or so we assumed). Exhausted and sweating from our ordeal, we returned home and presented the zinnia to Aunt Mari Lou, who was dutifully impressed. Using a tissue, I retrieved the bumblebee from the back of the car and entombed its body in our kitchen trash can. About an hour later, to our utter astonishment, the bumblebee, dazed but not dead, revived consciousness and started buzzing around the trash container. Was there to be no end to this feisty creature?

I shall not shock my readers with how I ultimately disposed of said bumblebee. Instead, I close with a reflection on the hasty conclusions we sometimes draw vis-à-vis the actions of others. Had my wife and I died in a head-on crash, some might reasonably have concluded that, weighed down with the burden of caring for an aged relative in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, I had preferred to take our lives rather than embrace the new responsibilities we had taken on. In like vein, others might have (mis)interpreted Glade’s gift as a poignant farewell tribute to a cherished colleague rather than the unintended instrument of said colleague’s death. Whatever the case, we would do well not to judge too quickly the actions of others, especially when we don’t have the full story. Finally (and tongue in cheek), I conclude that the well-known warning to “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” sometimes requires an addendum: “beware of friends bearing flowers, too!”