I got that bamboo from someone very special over 4 years ago...
almost exactly 4 years ago...
I can remember him telling me, "It only lives for like, 6 months, a year tops when its cut like that, but that's still longer than a bouquet of flowers. Just don't feel bad when it dies"
and he told me about how he got the bamboo with 3 stems that represented luck, as opposed to the 2 that were for love, because the three came in the jar with red rocks and was "pretty"
It lived past 6 months, it lived past a year.
Within a week of us breaking up one of the stems very suddenly died.
I took it as a sign (yes, even us atheists can believe in signs