Gardening through Grief

t’s back with a fire. Or maybe it never left. I am feeling so many pangs of sadness and grief, and even just watching these words materialize across my screen has my eyes welling up with big fat tears of loss. I really miss my dad these days.

This is my first spring without him. I had 47 years of his grounding presence. It was not always easy and we worked hard to find common ground between our very different belief systems. It was worth every ounce of grit and pain, because as we learned to respect each other’s differences, our relationship deepened. He was the best listener, and I miss dialing the home number that is no more knowing he’d always pick up on the second ring if he was in his basement office, smoking his pipe, listening to talk radio or classical music.

One year ago, he was fighting and losing a battle to two very aggressive cancers in a terribly frail body. It was heartbreaking, and yet even with his pain and suffering (those are my words, not his as he claimed to not be in pain until the very end), he was here with us. We were able to try to comfort him. We had time to say the words we needed to say. He clung to those months as he internally and bravely faced his mortality. We shared his hope, yet I quickly and quietly came to terms with how terminal his diagnosis was and how quickly he would slip away. Unfortunately, we had already lost another parent to a much less aggressive cancer a year earlier so I knew his was a much dire situation.

I have days where he feels so close. I wake some mornings having spent time with him at various stages of life. I scroll through my phone for old garden photos and find the many near the end last summer as I cared for him in his final hours.

I wish I could call him. He’s not here for my big events this week, like speaking live in front of hundreds of people or being able to hear my interview on Minnesota Public Radio yesterday. He doesn’t know that my book went into a second printing 3 days after it released. He also knew he wouldn’t be here for these things.

The garden has and will continue to embed these life experiences among its paths and plants. The garden is our life story. It’s definitely my life story. Many of the most important and difficult pieces of news have been received there, because, well, it’s where we live for half the year. And its in this bittersweet beauty that the garden becomes. It becomes a sacred space where life is intimately experienced. It’s where I went to aimlessly piece together life after losing a parent, and its with the bitter awareness that he won’t be here this spring or summer that I return, but this time grateful he is no longer suffering.

The uncertainty that surrounds us these days is exhausting (or is it just me?). But when I lean into the wisdom of plants and let their intrinsic rhythms guide my seasons, all is well. I am settling into this late spring with renewed optimism for a beautiful and storied garden season that has already made me appreciate her even more.

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