Susan Troy
When Spring approaches, I typically begin the process of planning the garden: Which rotations will be necessary, which seeds to start, amendments to add, fences to repair – all the necessary tasks to feed and nurture another season’s bounty. But tonight, as I struggle to comprehend yet another loss, my thoughts move in another direction. Tonight, I am reflecting on the opposite – putting a garden to rest.
I like taking down a garden as much as I do planting – perhaps even more so. It is a necessary reminder of the way life unfolds – the predictableness of it all. Death followed by rebirth – rebirth followed by death – how this pattern, this rhythm, is copied in our own lives. How patterns can disarm and at the same time, comfort us.
There will always be ‘big deaths’ – the physical deaths of those we love and the knowing that there will always be words that were left unsaid, embraces that were withheld, possibilities that will never manifest. These are the deaths that can haunt.
But tonight, I am not thinking about those ‘big deaths.’ I am thinking about ‘little deaths’ – the deaths that are seasonal – predictable. Disappointments, misunderstandings, words said in haste, decisions made without forethought, abandonment. These are the deaths that render — the deaths that erode and leach the soil – the deaths that are predictable.
C.S. Lewis said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” 1
Two choices. Love and risk the inevitable predictability of the little deaths, or give yourself over to no one, sheltered and shatterproof.
If you garden, you know that each season is a time of vulnerability. Each day presents with the possibility of loss – unpredictable rain, heat, pests – and yet, knowing the risks, we continue. We put in the necessary work to do the best we can to nurture and protect, all the while knowing that we may lose. And at the end of the season, we assess. We plan to do better. And we take the garden down.
On days when I feel the pain of disappointment, disrespect, or insult, it is the winter garden that comforts. It is there, in the season of brutal honesty, that I look to the bare earth’s reminder of little death. It is there, and only there, where I come to terms with the necessity of darkness, silence, and rest.
1. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Susan Troy is a retired biology and psychology professor living in Dubuque, Iowa. Following the death of her husband in 2019, she began writing as a means to reconcile grief.