A Passing and a Healing

Garden beds, a little farm, a visit by the sea.

My mom passed away two weeks ago at age 91 and in the comfort of her own bedroom. It was not hard to say goodbye as she has had dementia for the past few years and while she was happy and lived with my brother, it felt like in some ways she left gradually, bit by bit as her ability to engage with us shifted.

The morning she died I was in the garden area on our little farm that I call the bird haven, hip deep in overgrown foliage that I was carefully clearing, trying not to disturb the things I planted there, all natives, all doing well. I was thinking of my grandma, who was a gardener and loved nothing more than being outside with her plants and trees. She too died at 91 and I was remembering her when my brother called. A minute before he called my son called, saying my two young grandchildren had suddenly insisted that he call me. Both calls went to voicemail as I worked but something told me to stop and check the phone. All these little connections happened in the space of two minutes.

Since that day we’ve had unusually cool weather for this time of year in NC and I’ve been out in the garden beds working. The clearing of overgrowth, the noticing of plants in bloom or soon to be, the measuring of progress of things I planted as tiny seedlings now in full glory, the cyclic nature of all of this, has been a blessing right now. Activity, proximity to trees and plants and bees and butterflies, birds and their songs, all of this has been a gift in a time of sadness.

The possumhaws in the photo above remind me that I had a vision for that little section of fencing that borders our barnyard, that it took awhile to get to creating it, that once I planted the tiny possumhaws it took more years for them to grow. And suddenly they seem huge. It feels like they’ve been there forever. I find it fascinating that the one on the left is so full and clearly thriving while the one on the right, a few feet away, is healthy but not taking full shape yet. The difference a few feet can make to a plant, and we humans have the ability to move to where we can thrive if we need to.

It’s a jungle here this time of year and I always remember to stop and just notice the lushness of the place where we live, how open and visible we are on our hill in the winter time, and how deeply surrounded and hidden we become by June. I love the winter landscape here but I also love the lush green that holds us close in summer.

I grew up spending lots of time outside - at play, with neighbor friends, with my grandma, doing work in her very large yard, in the house we moved to when I was in middle school, my mom’s dream house, which had a huge naturalized yard and backed up to hundreds of acres of forested land. Every place I’ve lived has had trees nearby, and for the past 21 years I’ve been on this little farm. When we bought it my mom and dad drove by to see it, before we closed and moved in, and my mom told me she could tell it was perfect for us, and perfect for me, and she was right.

Two nights after she died I dreamed a visit with her. We were at the seaside in the UK, wandering through a long and sheltered but open air market. She was talking to people and I was scouting for good coffee and some food. We looked at trinkets and showed things we liked to one another. And we talked almost nonstop, all the things we couldn’t say the past few years because of her dementia. It was amazing.

Going through photos I found one of my mom and me and my two little brothers. I remember this night, our pre-Christmas celebration with my grandma and step-grandpa, who we called Glen. They always left for Florida in November so we had early Christmas with them before they went. I remember being the girl in the photo, and I remember that although I was shy out in the world, I was confident at home. My mom gave me that, and my dad too, but my mom was the one who told me I could do anything I wanted to do, and she supported me in every journey I made along that path.

We will visit in the dream world. Meanwhile I’ll be in the garden.

---