Cultivating Beauty in Gardens of Stone

I spent time again in my mother's garden today, cutting flowers. I made bouquets and took them to the graves.

I've taken a week off for some bereavement time and am spending it away, at my mother's house. I hope for a quiet week, to let down and to be in the grief without having to compartmentalize it in order to fulfil social and professional functions.

I woke up this morning with a migraine. 

It's not surprising, really. I've been holding a lot of tension in my body, and the freedom of rest enables all that to release very quickly. Or maybe my body just doesn't know what to do with the energy when I no longer have to hold it so tightly.

So I've been moving gently through the day. I let myself cry when the impulse comes.

I took my time cutting the flowers from all the hydrangea bushes in the garden - blue, deep purple, rich, deep pink,  soft pink, and light, bright pink. The bouquet felt abundant and enormous as I carried it to the car. I cut some trailing vines from two of Mom's pothos houseplants and dug out some gold cord from a bin that has gift wrapping supplies. A trimmed plastic water bottle held the flowers while I transported them. 

The ride across town to the cemetery was slow, owing to heavy traffic. That's probably a good thing since Washington has installed traffic cameras everywhere to penalize careless or mildly-distracted drivers. 

The flowers from my aunt's burial almost three weeks ago were still there and directed me to her grave. I noticed a statue of an angel nearby, a landmark until the stone is placed. The ancestral plot is easy to find and well marked. It's been almost 20 years since a grave has been opened there. The grass on Mom's grave has almost grown back completely. The new grass is the only thing that whispers that a grave was recently opened.  

I made four bouquets with the flowers I brought and visited my grandparents, great-grandparents, aunt, and parents. I lingered with Mom for awhile, wondering what enables us to leave the remains of those we love in the earth. It is an ancient practice that hopes for rebirth - the tomb is a womb of sorts. I'm not sure that we are deeply conscious of the ancient impulse. 

To plant our parents like seeds in gardens of stone.

 

 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began this writing, and this is what my mind is on most of the time.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.