Flower

Good morning. It is a beautiful day. I woke tired and groggy. My son has a cold and I was up with him through the night. I could not fall asleep either as the obtuse pain of my mother’s death (she died in December) retracted into the tiny pinching, piercing ache once again. A deep acceptance of her death came over me. I cried. I called. I wept. I wrote.

I woke renewed. Inspired. I opened the curtains and let the sunshine through the lace curtains in my bedroom.

I got dressed and kissed my son and husband good morning. I went to my garden and took photos of the flowering fruits and veggies. Nature is beautiful. I thought about the sadness from the night before and made the connection between joy and sorrow.

Pumpkin flower from garden. Bright orange star, perfect in her morning muse.

Kahlil Gibran said something to the effect of joy is your sorrow unmasked. This is true.

I felt joy as I took photos of my garden and porch drenched in sunlight and shadows.

Poetic porch

Radishes in garden

Life is a beautiful mess.

Hope you have a great day.
PS – This is my first post from my smartphone. I have named her Ms. MENSA. 🙂
PSS – I took all photos with Ms. Mensa.

Garden Muse: Seeds and Sorrow; Fruits and Joy

Garden

I am excited for summer. I love the bounty of summer crops. Right now we are growing radishes, spinach, lettuce, corn, carrots, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, oregano, basal, zucchini, and peas. I have a flower garden growing as well. We planted everything from seed so it is exciting to see it come to life. Trusting in a seed to feed you is a leap of faith. It provides me with such a sense of peace to know that I am capable of growing my own food. We had a salad tonight which had spinach, salad greens, and radishes from our garden.

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Radish

“Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

My mother and father were avid gardeners. If you look at this photo closely, you will see just a glimpse of the garden of my childhood home. I am the child to the far right on the edge of the pool. If you walk around the pool to the left, you would find a vegetable plot filled with raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, plum trees, apple trees, grape vines, boysenberry trees, vegetables, and many other flowers and garden goodies. In fact, my father made us dandelion soup once. My mother got mad at him for serving it to us as kids. It is very good for you.

Refresh — Childhood Garden

Hope. Wish. Dream. Be.

“In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” – Alice Walker

Beauty Bee — Blackberry Bush

I found out recently that my mother’s funeral will finally be scheduled. We have been waiting in limbo since January. She passed away on Christmas Eve (Read this if you want to know the details). I have had a hard time with this loss.  I will have to allow myself to feel it. It is a different kind of pain now, as it is obtuse, reaching its giant ocean size arms around me as if orbiting into space. The pain was acute in the beginning when she first passed away. Each acknowledgement of it was an arrow in my heart, made of thousands of acute angles — stabbed straight into my heart. Now the tiny arrows have opened into a more giant obtuse pain, something that expands and retracts — expands and retracts — expands and retracts.

My mom, Betty with her beautiful red hair and amazing smile

This photo was taken in 2003 on Christmas Eve. My father passed away in December of 2003. This photo was taken at my best friend’s house.

” A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That’s what makes her a mother.” – Meghan O’Rourke

Now I am a mother and as I grieve the loss of my own, I am in the full blossom of being a mother to a three-year old.

My Beautiful Benjamin dancing to the garden muse

“All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.” – Meghan O’Rourke

Sitting on a bridge in my childhood garden. My parents created this beautiful garden from scratch.

My mother’s ashes are on my mantle. Click here to read more about that and how I finally took down the Christmas lights to clear some space for my own healing and mourning process. I can not put into words just yet what is swirling inside me about finally having to let go by burying her ashes at Arlington. Her final wishes were to be buried with my father at Arlington National Cemetery. He passed away in 2003 and was cremated. My mother made arrangements for them to be buried together in the same plot. Her name will be on one side of the tombstone and my father’s will be on the other. They will be laid to rest together. My father was a veteran of the Korean War. Read this to learn more about my father, Inchon, and his gardens. He was a member of the Frozen Chosen.  Read this to learn more about why I miss him (this essay is one of my favorite things I have ever written, as it honors who he was as a man, husband, father, and veteran).

My dad stopping to smell the roses on my wedding day

Read this if you want to read an essay about having to say goodbye to my father and get married to my soulmate.

I have to assume that burying my parents will be the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, but it also has the power to be one of the most beautiful ceremonies of my life. I can only imagine the fertile soil this experience will provide in the garden of my life. I should think about the seeds I want to plant in it. Love, Respect, Hope, Joy, and of course sorrow. You can not get around sorrow. It is the fertilizer in life.

Garden Angel

Just as Kahlil Gibran said, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked…”

On Joy and Sorrow

By: Kahlil Gibran

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. 

Some of you say, “Joy is greater thar sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. 

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

So, I plant the seed and water this fertile soil with my tears and allow God’s love and my love for my parents to be the sunshine.

Lively Lettuce Leaf

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece” ― Claude Monet

Read this if you want to learn more about my mom and how magical she was to me as a child and how deeply I loved her — how deeply I love (present tense) her.

Stars

Life goes on, but grief stands still. I have learned that I am moving through the process of grief and accept it is on my own time. I accept that I have to feel everything and allow the moisture from this pain to provide the rain for my inner garden to grow.

The Red Rose of St. Therese is in blossom in my garden.

In May of 2011, I had a close call with losing my mother. She had a serious bladder infection. She ultimately overcame it, but my heart felt giant as I was so close to her death and the anticipation of losing her. Read this if you want to read about that experience. When she did pass away, it was a bladder infection that was the cause of death.

3 Stars

“Even hundredfold grief is divisible by love.” ~Terri Guillemets

“Sorrow makes us all children again — destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

My son makes me whole.

Blossom

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” – Washington Irving

The photo above is the fireplace mantle in my bedroom. The elbow in the orange plaid belongs to my husband. The cards on the mantle are some of the bereavement cards I received after my mother passed away.  I finally (very reluctantly) took down the Christmas lights that were strung across the mantle. I had a hard time letting go of Christmas this year. My mother passed away on Christmas Eve. In some strange way, keeping the lights up somehow made her not dead. But she is.

I knew I had to remove the Christmas lights from the mantles in both my bedroom and our parlor. The parlor is where we eat. It is the center of our 1880 Victorian home. Oak wood floors, curry yellow walls, my husband’s grandfather’s table that has seen generations of family meals, the cherry wood buffet with a pinkish marble counter top flanks the room on the southeast wall. My mother and I bought this buffet together at an antique flea market in Cheyenne called The Avenues. I loved that flea market. I used to go there with my mom all the time. She had a booth there. Betty (my mom) knew how to barter proper. She knew her antiques. I remember marveling at her when she would flip over a china dish or tea saucer and know exactly, right then and there, its value and worth. She would cross reference names and brands in her antique books.

I eyed the beautiful buffet, sliding my palm across the cool marble counter top. My mom smiled at me, aware of my interest. Immediately, without saying a word to her, she said, “Offer them $100 less, that you will pay cash, and that you will pick it up today.”  The buffet was marked down. Betty followed with, “It’s marked down. The vendor wants to unload it.”

Shyly, I went to the counter where the owner of the flea market was sorting tickets — placing vendors’ sales tickets into piles. “Hi Betty,” she said to my mother. They launched into a short conversation about what my mom had sold that week in her booth, doling out names of antiques and flea market treasures like a diner waitress does to a well-known menu.

“$400 cash and I will pick it up,” I said awkwardly. Betty stood next to me, quiet.

My beautiful redheaded mama I adore and love

“Let me call the vendor. What is the vendor number on the ticket?” the antique shop owner said. My mom jumped in with a name, as she knew all the flea market vendors at the Avenues. The Avenues was located on a curving turn that arched to a left, right across from the Cheyenne airport. I had taken this curvy turn hundreds of times, as it also is a turn that takes you to Cheyenne Frontier Days Park.

“The owner of the shop verified Betty’s hypothesis — Betty’s gut instinct. Yep, the vendor wanted to unload it. I just got a deal, I thought to myself. How I love a deal. That is one of the charms and alluring pulls of flea market antique shopping. Bartering is where you earn your flea market stripes. I had just earned my first. Don’t get me wrong, I was a garage sale barter champion. Heck, I would barter for a shoelace if I could. It just came natural.

I felt the rush of the bargain. We arranged a time to come pick it up with my husband. He had the truck. He had the muscles.

My mom had a confidence to her that was unmistakable.  Most people felt very comfortable in her presence, unless you crossed her. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” she always said. Although she always gave people the benefit of the doubt. Her heart was large. Her laugh was larger. I miss it. I long for it. I wish I had her laugh recorded.

These lovely artifacts (antique books, trinkets, letters, objects) punctuated her life. They were just things when she was alive. Now that she is gone, they are maps of who she was. It is interesting what we take for granted when we have our loved ones live in the flesh and blood. When they are gone, physical objects sometimes act as sieves for our love for them., filtering the pain of the loss and acting as windows to transport us to memory — to love.

My mother’s ashes are on the mantle in the parlor. We are still waiting to hear from Arlington Cemetery on her funeral arrangements  The mantle in the parlor was flanked by two Santas my mother had given me and that were present at childhood Christmases.  Colored Christmas lights resembling brightly colored sugary balls — twisted, twined, and wrapped in fake garland — snaked along the mantle between the Santas and my mother’s urn. Well actually, the garland and lights rested over her walnut box urn since I was afraid if I put the garland behind the urn box, that somehow it would make the box fall to the floor.

I plugged in the lights every night after her death, sometimes leaving them on all day, well past traditional Christmas light season. It was my ritual. I would plug them in first thing in the morning and say my prayers and send my love to her. Sometimes I would weep at the mantle, longing for my mother’s words, embrace, smile, laugh. I talked to her sitting at our parlor table. I wept at the parlor table. At night, before I went to bed, I would unplug the lights and kiss the wooden box of ashes. I took down the lights last weekend and forced myself to take down the Santas that flanked both sides.

My February Memorial Mantle

For some reason I can’t really explain, I knew it was time to take down the Christmas lights and Santas and embrace a new flower that is emerging from this loss. I am not saying I am hurting less, but the pain is less acute and more obtuse — surrounding me with its wide angle, enveloping me in sadness. A bud is emerging and flower petals are wrapped tight around the bud. Creating a cleaning space for my grief will provide the necessary sunshine to get the reluctant bud to open. The process of grief is not linear. I hopscotch back and forth between anger, denial, acceptance. I do realize my mother is somehow (beyond my understanding as a human on earth) with me, within me, and above me watching me grow and blossom.

I just will never be able to explain it nor completely understand it.

Azalea blossom in my front yard.

“Grief is the price we pay for love.” – Queen Elizabeth II

Photo Source: Mother Nature Network
Angel Wings

Mantle in my bedroom after clearing off Christmas lights.

“Grief changes shape, but it never ends.” – Keanu Reeves

My husband carved the wooden heart as a gift. The angel came with a sympathy card from a childhood friend who knew my mom as a child. My mom was the Girl Scout troop leader. This friend remembered how my mom taught all the Girl Scouts the Girl Scout Promise.

The Girl Scout Promise

On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country,
To help people at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.

The Girl Scout Law

I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

Angel Heart

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” – Edith Wharton
My mother was both the  candle and the mirror.

The turquoise turtle was my mom’s. It rested in her bathroom on her two tier bronze circular shelf that also held her Buddhas.

“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.” –  Rudyard Kipling

Mantle in my bedroom

“A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That’s what makes her a mother.” – Meghan O’Rourke

Monet Mantle. One of the things that made me fall in love with my husband was he had a Monet painting. His sensitivity to both my parents’ death has helped me survive these great storms. My father passed away in 2003. My husband held me as I cried myself to sleep through both loses.

“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.”  – Mother Teresa

Parlor room mantle.

“Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement. I will not try it. Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.” –  Jane Welsh Carlyle

Buddha Mantle. The two Buddhas next to my mom’s ashes were hers. The rose is from my backyard rose vine.

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.” – Buddha

You can see a little bit of the buffet in this photo that I bought with my mom at the antique flea market.

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.” – Khalil Gibran

Love Mantle. Healing Mantle. I move through the grief and stop when I can not walk anymore.

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” – Washington Irving