Now it towers over that garden, and other children play there, and other tired doctors look down at it from their windows and remember what he said, and in that way the tree does for the whole hospital what he did for our family: it stands in the middle of hard things and quietly insists that life goes on, and that it is beautiful, and that it is worth it.

Marcus chose that spot on purpose, I think, though he never said so.

Of all the places in that enormous hospital, he chose the garden outside the ward for the sickest children to spend his final strength, the place where hard truth and stubborn beauty live closest together, where blossom falls on families receiving the worst news of their lives.

He understood that comfort matters most exactly where it is hardest to find, that a garden is more precious in a hospital than anywhere else on earth.