"The thing with feathers which perches in one's soul;
And sings the tune, without the words and never stops at all" - Emily Dickinson
Hope, it is said, Springs eternal. As days grow longer, warmer and when finally day and night share equal length, the vernal equinox once again tickles the hearts and souls of gardeners with feathers of hope.
We sow our seeds, coddle our transplants and with childlike impatience, mark time till our favorite nursery reopens. All in the hope that this year the roses evade blackspot, or larval broods of loopers weave their lacy patterns on trap crops instead of our broccoli. Or drought doesn't desiccate, nor rains rot and deer just look.
The time of renewed hope and yet another chance for our gardens was at hand. But not for me.
My gardener's heart and soul with hopes for another chance in the garden this eternal spring, had been eclipsed by the heart and soul of a daughter mourning the loss of another chance with her father.
When my father died early last month, there remained precious little enthusiasm to embark on another gardening season. Little reason to even to think of it. The previous months of tending to his care had left me emotionally and physically drained. All hopes we shared were set adrift and ultimately engulfed by the cold, dark late winter sky. Hopes to sow seeds for just one more season together, to coddle our new found, strengthened bonds and with childlike impatience, mark time till he was well enough to explore a new course for both our lives. Day by day, week by week, hope had been doled out in tiny increments. Hopes raised and lowered countless times. Progress. Setbacks. Promises. Reality. And the reality was that there would be no more seasons for those hopes. There'd be no more time. Time to talk of family, cars, cats, the price of groceries or how my garden fared. Nor time to sit in his favorite recliner, stroking Sandy, his rotund tabby, ensconced in his lap, talking softly to her till purring and calm set them both asleep.
There was no desire nor even a spark to prep the greenhouse or plan new additions to the garden, let alone sow even one seed. The garden would have to fend for itself this Spring and perhaps the entire season. Possibly, some time when the sun was even higher in the sky and my gardener's heart was beckoned by birds and butterflies and the smell of warmed earth, I would one day be lured to puttering or pruning. But, for now, nature and my heart had to take its course.
In a gardener's life...in a person's life...each season is different. Bringing new challenges, changes, guidelines and priorities. Some we accommodate. Some we celebrate triumph. Others determine a new course. At that moment in time, I had no course. Nothing left to accommodate and no hopes of triumphs over tragedy. I was rudderless. I was spent. I didn't care.
Leafing mindlessly through gardening magazines, I'd make feeble attempts at noting new varieties of plants, specials on seeds and gardening equipment. The garden, fully visible now from receding snow, was something I only viewed from the window. Here and there, tiny purple crocus, daffodil buds and emerging perennials would catch my eye. But, in the next instant reality wrenched my senses back to the hopelessness of it all. You know. Like those mornings, upon first opening your eyes, when your mind is a blank slate. Then within seconds, the sadness which haunted you just moments before falling asleep the night before, slams you with tidal waves of reality and you're once again adrift in hopelessness. I'd felt that before, when my mother died and those familiar currents were tugging at me again.
Pouring through old family albums, full with photos of my mother and father standing in her gardens brought me solace in reconnecting with old memories. Photos taken on anniversaries, their birthdays, Mother's and Father's Days with them and the new hydrangea, cherry tree or climbing rose that my husband and I had given them. Photos of them on vacations, usually poised in formal, sculptured gardens, along wooded trails, amidst drifts of lilies, or picnicking on hillsides of bluebonnets. Although not the gardener, my father fully recognized the beauty and peace that nature provided. That and the fact that my mother, the inveterate gardener, would have dragged him there anyway.
One afternoon about two months before his passing, I sat with him in his hospital room, telling him of the plans for his new apartment. It was not an easy task to tell him that his entire life was to be permanently altered. Nor could I ever fully grasp his sense of it all. My father, always the caretaker, would now be the one taken care of. Such is the role of the adult child, and one I never doubted or questioned or regretted for one moment. On that day, I tried to encourage in him some enthusiasm, some reason, some hope for him to look forward to this change in his life. It would be that conversation, which would take an unexpected turn, and in months to come, restore my hope as well.
At home each night, I'd write in a journal after returning from the hospital. Many times I wrote through tears. A lot of times, through anger. Mostly, though, it was to release some of the pain that had no escape but to burrow deeper within me. So, these things he spoke to me that day were as true and accurate as I can remember.
I was telling him about how I'd decorated his new residence which would be only five minutes from my home. I'd saved the blue curtains from his house and refashioned them to accommodate the apartment windows. I was reluctant at first to tell him I'd secured the valance at each corner with small bundles of dried lavender and baby's breath, fearful he'd think them too "girlie" or feminine. But, in the scheme of things, this was so minor and by then there was little we withheld from each other. A rapport, I lamented, we'd not achieved earlier in our relationship, but now we clung to it like flotsam careening down rapids, both of us helplessly navigating to postpone plummeting over the inevitable, unavoidable falls.
"I hope you don't mind, Daddy, but when I rehung your old curtains, I used some of my dried flowers as sort of tie backs", waiting for a little wince in his eyes, raised eyebrow and muffled sigh.
Instead, he pulled himself up by the handrail on the bed and as I propped the pillow up behind him, he surprised me with, "You mean the flowers from your garden? 'Stuff' you grew?"
As I said, gardening wasn't my Dad's thing, and I wasn't all that sure he ever really knew just how much gardening meant to me or exactly what I did out there all the time and with all that 'stuff' I grew. So, with a certain amount of trepidation and almost in the form of a question, I managed,"Uh, yeah?" and waited.
No wincing. No raised eyebrows. No muffled sigh. Clear, but a bit weak, he asked, "S'that from last year's flowers? Like the other things you've got hanging in your shed and garage? Stuff you used for those wreaths you made for your mother and Christmas things?"
I rose from the chair to sit next to him on the bed. There was a sudden urgency within me to be as physically close to him as possible. I brushed back his few strands of hair and stroked his forehead, which had become my personal method of preventing myself from crying in front of him. Sort of an emotional fail safe to keep it together if just for that moment.
"Poppie (my nickname for him), I never realized you knew what I did with some of the things I grow. I didn't even know you remembered those wreaths. So... then...you don't mind about the lavender on the curtains?"
"Don't be silly", dismissing my concerns with a waive of his stronger hand. "I know how hard you've been working on getting that place ready for me. Those flowers? That's something I'd kinda expected you to do anyway. I bet you even put one of those wreaths on the door?" I rolled my eyes, because I had done just that the day before. "I always knew that garden of yours meant a lot to you, and I could see how much work you put into it. But, Linda, you know me almost as well as your mother did, and you know I don't talk about stuff like that. Maybe I shoulda said something before. I guess I just thought you always knew how proud I was of you. Like now."
Sometimes we put too much importance on hearing the words. All my life I thought I needed that verbal reassurance. Now, when he spoke, I realized they were just words after all. I no longer needed them...I realized I never really needed them. Why should I? When I had his heart all along.
"I think you with your flowers is kinda like me with Sandy. When I call her up on my lap, and she starts to purr when I'm petting her, that little cat seems to know I'm not feeling so hot cause I'm thinking about your mother and she starts to purr louder. That's why I'm glad she's gonna be able to come live with me in the apartment. It'll help kinda shut out the bad stuff and give me some more hope. I think maybe that's what your garden does for you, too."
Not only was that the most he'd spoken for awhile without needing the oxygen which was constantly by his bedside, but it was the most poignant, and unbeknownst to him, insightful thing he'd ever said to me. Until...
"Don't let any of this business stop you from going back to that, Linda. I know you wanna be here all the time. I wish you'd take better care of yourself. Don't knock yourself out." (His favorite phrase and his way of letting people know he was grateful for their help.) "You just make sure you get out there once this winter's over with and take care of that garden of yours. It needs you probably as much as you need it, and it'll take your mind off all this".
He asked me to prop him up further by pressing the button on the bed. Straining to be heard over the hum of the bed's motor, he was curious to know if I'd put in the garlic last September and almost as if fearful I'd forget, he said, "And you are gonna do those beefsteaks again, right?" Yes to both.
"Well, would you plant something just for me when you get back out there in the Spring? Maybe you can grow something near that plant with the white flowers that your mother liked so much. That one she had planted outside the living room window that smelled so good. Aw, just throw some seeds around any of your mother's old plants that you dug up and moved after she died. Promise?"
"I promise", my voice cracking as I reached to brush back those strands of hair again and again. Reassuring him as I continued to stroke his forehead, "I'll go check the seeds I've got as soon as I get home and set them aside". I squeezed his hand and with a half-hearted smile, managed, "Just for you, okay?"
I pressed the button on the bed again, this time to lower his head so he could rest. "Now, you get some sleep before dinner comes." I kissed him on his forehead as I always did when I said good bye. "I'll see you tomorrow. Poppie, I love you, you know?"
"Yeah, yeah. I know. I love you, too and remember, don't knock yourself out and you get back to that garden!"
Indelible as his words were then, they faded during the next few weeks as our time together grew shorter. Eventually, I'd banish them completely. Till on one raw, overcast Monday morning three weeks after his funeral I was outside filling the feeders, when the tanned stalks of my "David" phlox caught my attention. The white, good smelling one from my mother's garden. Gently tugging at one of the stem remains, it easily dislodged from the crown. For ten years now it had never succumbed to mildew, miraculously escaped hungry deer and bloomed profusely each mid summer permeating the air with its fragrance. Now as I knelt to brush away the leaves and pull back the mulch, I could see tender new green growth pushing through old, spent vegetation. I remember staring at it as if it were the first time I'd ever seen a re-emerging perennial.
Possessed with an inexplicable determination, I hurriedly squished through muddy, softened earth toward the front garden. To where most of my lavender grows. Sure enough, interspersed along gray twigs of Hidcotes, Munstead and Spanish lavender were tiny needles of muted green. I ran my hand along the brittle stems. Its faint aroma clung to my palm. Even the bleak chill of that first full day of Spring couldn't mute the burgeoning essence of its promised blue-tipped wands wafting their full fragrance once coaxed by curious bumble bees. A harbinger of things to come. Of nature's hope for another season of life. Hope which I'd abandoned for my garden. Hope denied my father.
I clutched my jacket tighter. The air had turned even colder. A few gentle snowflakes brushed my chilled cheeks but melted as they mingled with warm tears. More flakes fell. Thicker and faster. It would be one of those heavy wet snows that splayed arborvitae, drooped pines and compressed new growth. Already the gray twigs with muted green needles began to bow from clumping snow. Within an hour an early spring blanket of white covered my garden. The gray twigs would be barely visible by noon. Sitting in the den by the front window, as winter persisted against the unrelenting hope of spring, I stroked Sandy, now nestled in my lap and in my care as I'd promised my father I would do if he was unable. When I remembered another promise. A promise to "get back out there and plant something for me..maybe near that plant with the white flowers". A promise made to a man of few words, but the ones he spoke to me that day in the hospital about the integral role of gardening in my life now resounded in my heart. These were the words that would help me reconnect with that part of myself I'd been denying. A part that has been my respite, my teacher and my inspiration through dark and darker times before.
Losing my father was losing a part of myself, and I suspect he wouldn't want me to lose yet another part. Albeit a much smaller, less significant part. But a part of me, nonetheless. So I wouldn't be able to start seeds in the greenhouse this year. So my season would begin later than usual. So there'd be no homegrown seedlings to plant and perhaps some perennials might be lost from neglect. Life goes on. Nature sees to that. My garden would be a little sparse this year. But, whatever it lacked, whatever imperfections it bore, it would still be my garden and I would always be its proud gardener. Like my father, who was not a flawless man, he would always be my father, and I would always be proud to be his daughter.
As soon as the soil warms, after I clear away last fall's leaves that still lay matted on the beds, I'll survey what's survived, repair what I can and plant the seeds I promised my father. Hoping that some of his seeds will take hold and bloom near plants that had been my mothers. They always grew so well together in reality, and the reality is that he would want to be near her anyway.
LINDA
"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life."- Proverbs, 13:11
FOR DADDY
September 8, 1919 - March 4, 2005
Copyright© Linda M. Frank 2005 All Rights Reserved