Garden Therapy

One of the tremendous challenges of this year has been the amount of death I have encountered.  So many good people who touched my life in a variety of ways passed away after battling cancer.

While you know in your head that you have to say goodbye, your heart just can't let go.  It aches for the pain they have been through.  It cries for the memories left undone.  It absolutely breaks for the loss of yet another special person now absent from your life.

First to go was the husband of a co-worker.  A kind, wonderful man who had a sense of calmness and contentment with him at all time.  He was a man who could teach you about the joy of life just by allowing to look into his face. 

24 hours later, we had to let go of a fellow teacher.  This teacher who's laughter, spirit, and sense of faith are still with me in so many ways.  She started the year off with us, went to a doctor's appointment, and never came back. 

In all the craziness, I pushed those feelings back.  After all, I had a classroom of small children and a group of 60 kids in an after school theatre program depending on me.  I had to keep it together for them.  I would deal with the emotions later.

But before I could begin the process of digging out, I was notified via Facebook that my paternal grandmother was in the hospital and had days to live.  Due to family complications, I had virtually no contact with my grandmother or the rest of the family.  Tremendous amounts of guilt added to the emotional toll.  Of course, the emotional toll would have to wait just a little bit longer.  I added it to the mountain of emotions growing within me.

Two weeks later, school was over and I was prepared for the tidal wave waiting to descend upon me, but life had one more surprise.  My sister-in-law's mother passed way two weeks to the day of my grandmother's passing.  This woman, oh I can't even begin to explain her!  She was pure heart!  The debt I owe this woman is simply beyond words.

And that's when the overwhelming emotional wave hit.  No more excuses.  No more pushing it away.  It was here.  My heart was so dark and heavy.  I simply didn't know what to do.  Somehow, I ended up outside.  Armed with my shovel, I got into the dirt.  I dug and I dug and I dug.  I would go out first thing in the morning in pajamas not caring who saw me.  I would leap off the couch in the evening just to dig one more hole.  Sometimes I smiled.  Sometimes I cried.  I just knew it was something I had to do.  This overwhelming need to put plants and flowers into the ground just consumed me.  This then led to a need to feed every bird I could see.  One bird feeder has grown to five in my not so big back yard. 

I didn't get it at the time.  Maybe I still don't truly get it.  But it was as if all this gardening was my own personal therapy.  After all the death I had encountered, maybe I needed life around me in whatever form I could.  I know not every plant is going to make it.  I know that many of these flowers will die at the end of the season.  But I needed to go through this process.  I needed to deal with the deaths in my life.  This was the way my subconscious finally took control forced me to confront the wall of emotions I had pushed away for so long.

I now have a yard full of flowers and birds to care for and enjoy.  I also have more lightness in my heart.  I still ache for those people who are gone, but the memories they have left are so much stronger than the feelings of hurt and anger. 

And I was able to go to my favorite greenhouse and leave without taking a single flower with me.  To me, that's progress.