Will We Still Garden When Grief Comes?

In the past couple weeks I have watched two close friends experience the grief of unexpectedly losing a parent.  Another friend is closing in on a year without his father and the grief is still an ever-present weight in his life.

Nothing focuses our attention on what matters quite as acutely as grief does.  In those moments we cling to whatever gives us hope, whatever gives us peace, or whatever just feels safe.  All of the other things in our lives just recede into the background, into what life used to be like.  Before.

I keep this photo at my desk at work as a reminder that what matters most to me can fit in a single picture.

As an outsider in this time of grief, I have watched my friends turn different directions.  One turned to a faith in God that had been dormant for years.  He wanted to experience something he hadn’t felt in a long time.  Another turned away from God saying he couldn’t believe in an all-powerful and all-loving being that wouldn’t give his father peace before he died.   This friend sought peace in other things I won't name here.  

Life is filled with things for us to do.  We stay busy with friends, hobbies, passions, and pursuits.  But when grief visits, we suddenly find it not only easy to walk away from these things, but necessary.  These things might have felt like a critical component of ourselves just days before.

Watching my friends struggle and watching what they choose to do in their time of need has prodded me to consider what my response would be.  What would I turn to?  What would no longer feel important?  If it would not be important to me in a time of pain, should it really be important now? 

I was pondering these very questions while working in the yard on Sunday and I quickly realized that gardening is one of those things that could melt away if tragedy struck.  The weeds would grow and I wouldn’t care.

Grass and weeds creep in on the orange tree's territory.  It is littered with last year's fruit and this year's blooms.

Tomatoes would rot on the vine but it wouldn’t matter because I wouldn’t have an appetite.  The sprinklers would fall into disrepair and I would neglect them.  I would absolutely stop turning the compost.  But I believe that I would eventually return to gardening.  I would return to it because it is a quiet way to spend a day.  I would return to it because my laboring would help my body and my heart feel in tune.  I would return to gardening because it allows the mind to wander.  I would return to it because of the perspective that gardening provides on seasons, life and death, renewal, beauty, hope, hard work, and sustenance. 

Someone else could worry about feeding the birds.

I am thankful for my garden.  I am thankful for a quiet place within which I can mull over the questions I have.  I am thankful for the peace I have and I hope that I can use that peace to share a little comfort with my friends who need it.  

Despair Grows In My Garden

I suspect that everyone hates weeds and that at the top of your list is the weed you deal with most often. I have plenty to choose from but my most hated weed is one that really falls under that annoyingly apt line "A weed is a flower in the wrong spot."

The flowers in the wrong spots in my life are Palm seedlings from just one tree in my neighbor's yard. 

They grow everywhere with no encouragement from me.  They sprout up through rocks.

These rocks border the walkway to my front door.  This area gets no water and yet the seedlings thrive.

And through mulch.

A fresh layer of mulch does nothing to keep the seedlings from reaching for the light.

And where nothing else grows.

I'm amazed at how densely these grow.  Again, all these seedlings from a single tree next door!

They even grow where other things can no longer grow.

When I cut down a tree in the front yard, the shade-loving Baby's Tears and Lace Fern gave up the ghost.

On the plus side, they are fairly easy to grab with bare fingers and pull out.  

Sisyphus photo from Wikipedia

But it's a Sisyphean task and I am no longer feeling up to the challenge.  I try to get on my hands and knees every other weekend and take a whack at these, but after a half hour of this nonsense my thoughts turn from the good and pleasant "connecting with nature" thoughts that gardening inspires to "what did I ever do to deserve this kind of treatment?" 

Inevitably, I'll have to rise from my weeding crouch and stretch my legs and aching back before they all seize and cause me to convulse on the ground like an overturned turtle.  While I stretch, I'll survey the results of my labor and that's when I'll see that for every hundred seedlings I pulled there are another hundred that I missed.  This is no way to spend a life.

And that's when I get existential.  Does anyone else even care if there are palm seedlings where they shouldn't be?  Does the FedEx guy notice them on his way up to the front door?  Do my neighbors think I've let the yard go to hell if I miss a few hundred seedlings?  Does any of this matter, you know, in the long run?  By believing myself to be a "good gardener" and all that entails, am I consigning myself to existential despair since the evidence will always show that I am not what I think I am?  And if I am not what I think I am, what am I? 

"That's a good question," I'll say to myself.  And then I'll go back to picking flowers in the wrong spots while I give the answer some more thought.

We Do One Thing at the Cost of Not Doing Another

A Stanley Marsh 3 road sign pretty well sums up
my view of the way time is passing.

I keep staring at my blog and thinking, “It’s been two weeks since I’ve written something. I should write something.”  And then I see on my blog roll that someone else has updated their blog and off I go. 

It’s not that I don’t want to write something or that I don’t have things to write about; I do.  It’s just that I’ve been busy with some things and lazy about other things. 

William Barrett wrote in his landmark study of Existential philosophy, Irrational Man, that “we know one thing at the cost of not knowing another.”  I concur.  But I would add to this that we could replace the words “know” and “knowing” with several other concepts and it would still be true.

We do one thing at the cost of not doing another.

We esteem one thing at the cost of not esteeming another.

We love one thing at the cost of not loving another.

This truth has been acutely evident in my life lately.  I have played in softball tournaments at the cost of not having Saturday’s in the garden.  I have spent lunch hours running to the Post Office to mail off eBay sales at the cost of not snapping garden photos.  I have spent those extra two minutes here and there playing Words with Friends at the cost of not taking the food scraps out to the compost bin.  I have been reading "A Year of Wonders" and "The Monsters and the Critics" instead of "Fine Gardening" and "Horticulture." 

How people spend their time and their money is the most visible barometer of what matters to them.  And lately, I have to say that I’m not feeling all that great about how I’ve been spending my time and I'm ready to get back to what feels right to me.  But first I have some commitments this weekend.  I will help a friend bring home some bookshelves (the curse of owning a truck), I will celebrate a wedding and I will attend a meeting.  These are good things, of course, but they take time.   

So I am also going to take a day off and make it a 3-day weekend.  And I plan on using at least some of that extra time to do one thing (gardening) at the cost of not doing several other things.

And I can hardly wait. 

I'm Getting Bluer Every Day

I’m sure this happens to everyone in some fashion.  A friend knows you majored in whatever you majored in while at college or, if you didn’t go to college, you developed a fondness for a certain area of interest.  That friend, therefore, assumes you paid attention in class and treats you like an expert on the subject whether you deserve it or not. 

I majored in English.  And now I’m expected to know things like how to diagram a sentence, how to write in iambic pentameter, and how not to dangle participles.  My ability to do those things is hit or miss.  Okay, it’s a total swing-and-a-miss when it comes to iambic pentameter. 

When I’m put to the test, I can often skirt a direct answer simply by saying something lofty like “Oh, that’s a really complicated answer.  I could explain it to you, but your mind would probably go into a boredom induced coma.  Just write it this way instead.”  But sometimes, there’s no getting out of it unscathed. 

A group of friends were sitting around talking the other morning when one of them remarked, “Some people show up and put on an apron.  Others show up and put a bib on.”  We all liked that metaphor.  “Wait, is that a metaphor or is it an analogy?” someone asked.  All eyes shifted my way. 

“Well, I can tell you for sure that it’s not a simile” I offered unhelpfully.     

Whether it’s a simile, a metaphor, an analogy or an allegory shouldn’t detract from its power.  That is why we use them; their power.  A pithy simile can make you nod in agreement like a bobblehead.  A well-placed metaphor can sock you with hurricane force.  An analogy has the staying power of an ancient oak tree.  And a thoughtful allegory can get you really worked up about the pig having absolute power around the farm. 

And this power can be found in surprising places if you learn to look for it. 

I found power while looking at a hydrangea in my front yard.  I’ve got nothing against a pink hydrangea (unlike Madonna) but I prefer blue so I have been adding aluminum sulfate for a couple years and you can see by the bloom on the left that it is starting to work. 

While I photographed this plant, it struck me that in some ways, our lives mirror this hydrangea.  The (almost) blue flowers are no more innately good or valuable than the pink flowers are.  And even though they look very different, they are part of just one body. 

In the same way, our lives, personalities, and relationships are filled with different things, often opposite things, that are no better or more valuable than the other.

I find this to be true when I consider how I straddle the line between maintaining healthy eating habits to help me live a long life and eating, drinking and being merry to help me live a full, rich life.

But it could apply to any number of things.  For instance, it could speak to how we spend our time: should we relax with a book or energize with a hike?  Or it could speak to how we spend our money: should we save for retirement or go on family vacation?  Or how we interact with others: should we offer selfless advice or just listen?  Should we let that comment slide or stand up for ourselves?  Should we be uncompromising in our convictions or should we learn to compromise?

Of course, if you know exactly who you are and who you are works for you just fine, there's certainly nothing wrong with a peaceful and consistent whitish-pink life.  

Or even an airy, light blue and white life with a little variegated background if that's your thing. 

I think what matters is that you take note of the colors around you and consider whether you're happy with them.  If not, you might want to add some aluminum sulfate to your life. 

And that aluminum sulfate is, of course, a metaphor for something else.  Unlike the apron and the bib which, I believe, is an analogy.