Dick Wall talked about his late wife’s memoir, Mister Owita’s Guide to Gardening to a small crowd at a Lower Alabama Arts Coalition event Tuesday night.

The book was published to critical acclaim in 2014, but Wall died of cancer within months of its publication. Dick Wall has been on the road promoting it ever since.

A central them readers will glean from the book – which is more about a friendship built around gardening – is about curing vs. healing.

“Curing is easy to understand,” Wall said. “It is the restoration of good health.

“But a cure is not always possible, like with Carol’s metastatic cancer. They said to her, ‘You have it, we can manage it, but you will die of it or with it.’

“When curing is not possible, you realize that healing is possible. It is a spiritual concept in which you are being made whole.”

Wall said he also learned lessons in his grief.

“You being to realize that something comes next.”

The book is available at LAAC’s The Gallery.