Beauty and Flowers

There is nothing like death to make you appreciate life.  While depression and sadness lurk around the edges, the center holds so much beauty. Right now in midsummer, my garden is blooming with lovely flowers, some of them taller than me. Feathery cleome nod in the breeze and Echinacea and bright yellow daisies peek out from under a tree. I planted a few cana lily bulbs in the spring without any sense of what they might grow into and now, there are this amazing bright red flowers, bobbing on tall stalks with red striped leaves. I am filled with amazement that I put them in the ground and they turned into these gorgeous surprises.

Alby was the gardener; it was part of his character that he could grow things. He had a magic touch with the earth; when I first met him, he planted almost an acre of vegetables down the hill from our house. He would set a pot of water to boil, run down and harvest his corn – from garden to table within 15 minutes. He grew flowers and got very angry when he discovered he was actually growing deer candy. He planted herbs for me to use in our meals. He tended the garden of our lives and after he died, I just could not take on the plants in his absence.

I have nearly always killed houseplants, although I have had more luck with the outdoor kind, but he was tending them. Friends have given me cuttings of jade, spider plants, lovely trailing things that flourished in their own homes. “You have to water them,” they would chide. I watered them, gave them pretty pots to live in but still they withered and died in a matter of days. I decided that I am just not a gardener at all.  But this year, I changed my mind.  I decided to channel some of Alby’s ability.  I planted an herb garden in one of the few sunny spots around the house and now, in addition to my flowers, I have an abundance of three kinds of basil, rosemary, tarragon, oregano AND marjoram, and a thriving sage plant.  There is an old wives’ tale that where a sage thrives, a strong woman lives. So here I am, world! I am growing plants and they are beautiful, strong and some of them are even tasty. Pesto, anyone?

Searching for Signs

Grievers often look for signs of their loved ones after they are gone.  Some people find pennies in their paths, some see butterflies.  A woman told me that lights turn on upstairs when she is downstairs and no one else is in the house. She is sure this is her husband and sometimes calls upstairs to say hello and to tell him to stop scaring her. Photographs show shining orbs or an aroma wafts through the room, seemingly without cause. But for every person who tells me they have seen a sign, there are 4 or 5 who say they wish they could. They long for some tangible message from the beyond that lets them feel that their lost loved one is still present, still looking out for them.
 
But if the desire for a tangible sign is a yearning for connection, what if our loved ones ARE showing up – in such subtle ways that we are missing the signal? Does a sign need to be a paranormal, graphic gesture? If we could see these random remembrances of them as connective threads, we might discover that our loved ones are present in our lives on a daily basis.  What about the random thought of something they said, a memory that suddenly arises and makes us smile?  Isn’t this a sign of our continued connection with our loved one after they die? 

 I challenge you to consider this: if our dead loved ones live on in our hearts, then they show up in our thoughts and memories. They show up when we don’t know what to do and suddenly remember what their advice would be.  They show up in a gesture that is just like theirs, in a song on the radio, in their favorite flower that blooms in the garden.

 
I challenge you to notice that they show up every day. The signs are there if you just pay attention.

Birds in the morning

Flights of Imagining

I've been thinking a lot about tool kits – an imaginary box filled with skills, strengths, resiliencies and other "tools" to get through the rough spots. My own encounters with grief waves have become infrequent but they still occur. Episodes of darkness, when the world feels broken and slowed somehow, used to last for days. Now, at nearly 6 years out, I have a dip every few months for perhaps an hour or so. This is real progress, but when the grief hits, I still need to rely on my inner resources. I still need to pull out an item from my tool kit.

My tool kit contains music. Listening, singing, drumming, humming – music has the power to open the channel between head and heart, so often blocked and restricted around the throat. Flowing into music and opening my voice elevates my mood. Music brings out another tool – dancing. Movement brings the music into my body and out again, integrating head heart and body. Reaching up to the sky, expanding my arms out and waving my torso and arms in spirals reminds me that expansion cures restriction. When sorrow collapses me into myself, opening my arms and chest helps to transform the sadness into a calmer feeling. When depression drops me to the floor, I allow myself a few moments down in the depths, then slowly rise, reaching up and outward. It is hard to stay in a dark place when you are imagining yourself unfolding like a spring flower.

Imagery. Imagination. When we are children, our imaginations run freely. We have a conversation with a giraffe, imaginary friends who live in China are about to arrive for dinner. As children, we have no issue with being a Bear, a Pirate or a person who can fly with special superpowers. As adults, we suppress these fantasies; they are "silly" or "childish" or "not normal." Imagination is the most important resource in our personal tool kits. As we grow up, we tamp down our dreams, our fancies. We don't trust our dreams or our envisioning power. After a while, we come to believe that we shouldn't engage in imaginal flights.

My trust in my own imagination was eroded by widowhood. My life broke open and I became afraid. The future, as I had imagined it, was gone. Slowly, I am remembering that imagery seeds my dreams; imagination is a strength I can utilize. It doesn't matter that I cannot literally fly; I have special skills that I ought to be using right now – dreaming, imagining, opening up to a fuller experience of life.

As I write this, it is a little too early to play music. But I can still dance to the sound of the birds, to the beating of my own heart. I can move to open joyfully to the experience of this day. I am going to do that right now!!