Tending to my Garden

My friend Jeff wrote a song, and lately I can’t get it out of my head. I think it might be a song about grief but I haven’t asked him yet. The main refrain is tending to my garden, and I often think of it as I go through the mundane tasks of my day.  

I’m in a season of grief right now. A long, long season. I think a lot of us are. There is so much suffering, everywhere.

The earth is entering its season of grief too. It’s almost November. The fallow season. Quiet. Dark.

Slowing down feels so hard. Some part of me is in motion at all times. I don’t know how to stop. Maybe it’s the OCD or maybe it’s my Aries moon or maybe it’s motherhood. I’m not sure.

Anyway, I’ve always hated the fall. I’ve always hated letting things be fallow. I’ve always hated grief. For me, survival lies in always, always moving. Tending the garden means planting and watering and pruning and checking. I am always asking: is it growing yet?

Jeff’s song is about tending to the garden but it’s also about doing nothing. I think that’s what hooked me. I’m in a season where I can’t do anything. It’s too early to start a new life. The old one is still wrapping up. I’m in between. The only thing to do is wait it out. I have to be alone with myself. I think I have to learn to like it.

Last weekend I was in a class and the teacher asked us to create a place for our grief in our imagination, a place where it could live, where we could go to spend time with it. Without hesitating, I pictured a garden.

It’s a popular metaphor. Probably because it’s good. Grief as the soil, full of the dead. Death plus time equals fertile ground, I think. I hope.

My dad died when I was eleven, and his death day is tomorrow, November 2^nd. He died in a time where no one in my family had any emotional resource to create a ritual to mark his passing. So every year the day comes and I think of him, and I do nothing. But maybe that’s the point. Tending to my garden. You don’t have to do anything with grief, except for to find a place for it and to visit from time to time.

On my computer there is a novel, halfway finished. Half is a generous estimate, actually. I’ve sort of just begun. I love this novel. I want to write it so badly. But every week, life finds a way of pulling me off track. My kid gets sick. More edits from the previous book show up in my inbox. Something from my previous life explodes in a new and surprising way and the pain is so overwhelming that I have to climb into my bed and wait it out. Every week my life finds a way of telling me to let it be.

I’m trying to listen. I’m trying to tend the garden in the way it wants to be tended: by doing nothing for awhile.

This is what that looks like:

I’m writing songs and letters.

I’m doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles.

I’m working my day job.

I’m floating in warm water.

I’m eating a lot of ice cream.

Sometimes I forget to eat lunch.

I’m looking at my phone.

I’m trying not to look at my phone.

I’m crying on airplanes.

I’m touching my body to make sure it’s still there.

I’m breathing.

I’m reading.

My kitten is waking me up in the middle of the night.

My child is waking me up early in the morning.

I’m cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. I am marveling at the persistent mess of my house.

I’m saying no.

I’m dancing. Dance cleaning.

I’m running.

I’m not running.

I’m drinking coffee.

I’m drinking beer.

I’m drinking water.

I’m drinking tea, even though I don’t really like it.

I’m watching The Golden Bachelor.

I’m dreaming the weirdest dreams.

Sometimes my vibrator runs out of batteries at the absolute worst moment.

Sometimes the loneliness confuses me, and I think I might be sick.

I’m trying so hard to do nothing.

I’m looking for signs.

Every time I look up, the light is so beautiful.

I think that I am liking fall.

I think that I am almost looking forward to winter.

This is one of the worst seasons of my life, but my friends are getting me through it. Jeff wrote the perfect song, before any of this happened. Sam and Wellington and Jack and Joanna helped me move a huge pile of redwood into my garage for the winter. Sarah came all the way out to celebrate my birthday, even though I cancelled my party and it was three months late. Hannah took me to a rave in the redwoods. Mia is watching my cat so I can cry on my mother’s couch. I have a few people I call when I start to think that all of this is my fault, and they give me very intense pep talks.

So many people are helping me. I’m not alone in my grief, even if it feels that way. I have my garden, and so does everyone else.

I’m in a fallow season. Maybe you’ve been here too. Or maybe you’re here right now. I am thinking of you. Grateful that we are all entering this season where, whether we want to or not, we will sit in the darkness; we will grieve. New dreams will grow but they will remain out of reach for now, because we aren’t meant to have them yet. Right now, we are tending our gardens by doing nothing. It sounds easy but we know it’s not.

Sending love.

Kate