On Gardening and Grief

You can read the research, but I’ve lived it. And even though I’ve lived it, it’s still an intimidating topic — but one that is too important not to talk about. The world feels off-balance right now. Covid-19 is still affecting our everyday lives, we can’t give and receive support in a lot of the normal ways, and a lot of us have lost something or someone recently. It’s also infertility awareness week, and I know that so many people are hurting. I can’t fix any of it, but what I can do is tell you my own story in hope that you find something helpful in it.

I became an accidental gardener through grief. I remember like it was yesterday: this same time of year, 5 years ago, approaching Mothers’ Day. The autumn before, I had experienced my first miscarriage — a complicated ectopic pregnancy that required an emergency trip to the ER and subsequent surgery to remove a dangerously ruptured tube. It took just a few short months to heal bodily, but by the next spring I was only beginning to process what I’d lost. Not only a baby and statistically half of my chances to get pregnant again in the future, but also the naive optimism that seems to form a beautiful halo around pregnant women for whom nothing has ever gone wrong. That would never be me again. Mothers’ Day became a source of dread. And so when my husband Brian asked if I’d like flowers, because even with no baby I was still a mother, I told him that flowers didn’t feel quite right. I didn’t want flowers, because flowers wilt and fade. I couldn’t handle watching them start out perfect and whole and then slowly die. I had so, so much to learn.

So I asked for a plant instead. We swung into the parking lot of Home Depot on our way home from who-knows-where and wandered through the garden center until I settled on a Confederate Jasmine vine. It wasn’t the showiest at the time, but it seemed like a good measure of permanence without requiring a huge space or money commitment. When we got home, I dug a hole and planted the jasmine. Early miscarriage is a unique form of loss because it’s nearly invisible. There is no tangible person or thing that is gone, only a flicker of life that is there — until it isn’t. But the grief can feel enormous and even more isolating because of its secrecy. Only a handful of people knew at the time that anything had happened because I wasn’t ready to share. But I did want something tangible to commemorate - something I could SEE and even care for. The hole that I dug was not a grave, but the cradle for a living memorial. I didn’t know it then, but this ritual was to become a theme throughout the next few years.

The jasmine vine didn’t flourish at first. It turns out that I had planted a sun-loving creature in nearly full shade. These things matter in gardening - a lot. The first winter the vine experienced a good bit of dieback, so I did some research and realized my error. The following spring, I moved her to a pot with a lot more sun, where she began to thrive. It was the beginning of my education as a gardener. Mostly, I began to observe. I checked on my vine often, and began taking trips around the entire yard to really look at everything else that was there. In 2015, we’d moved into a charming 1951 brick house in a hybrid style somewhere between ranch and cape cod. We immediately fell in love with the built-in arches and adorable dormers. But the landscaping was mostly awful. Funny that I hadn’t noticed that at first! Overgrown camellias, ancient straggly hollies, and scale-ridden azaleas dotted the front foundation like mismatched teeth, some blocking windows almost entirely while other spots stood empty, suggesting that the inhabitants had died some time ago. I learned that we had 11 pecan trees that first fall when the nuts fell and I spent hours on the phone gathering them while working with my insurance advocate to get the $50,000 of “non-essential” hospital bills covered. (They eventually were, after a difficult, drawn-out appeal.) I noted that there were a couple of gorgeous white flowers the next spring in one rather neglected bed… peonies! That same spring we dug out the first giant camellia and opened up the view from the kitchen. The light that came in made me hungry to pull out anything else that blocked a window. After a long perusal of the catalog and an informative conversation with a polite British gentleman, I ordered two blush climbing roses from David Austin to plant at the base of our front porch’s wrought iron archway. When they arrived, swaddled in plastic and looking more like forlorn thorny twigs with a few roots than the splendid plants of the catalog, we followed the planting instructions to a tee with the faith that they’d soon come to life. And they did, flowering gloriously even in their first year.

If I’d spent much of 2016 observing and just beginning to dabble, 2017 saw the spark turn into a flame. At the same time as I my love of plants and learning about them steadily grew, I entered what would be a long, dark valley of repeated loss and disappointment. We had taken a good portion of 2016 to recover from the first miscarriage, and 2017 found us trying again in earnest. Except that nothing happened - for almost a year. Early in 2017, Brian and I were referred to a specialist for a more in-depth evaluation. We both had enough triggers for the doctor to recommend that we start treatment immediately. Much of the rest of the year revolved around doctor’s appointments for me: blood draws, ultrasounds, and ordering special prescriptions. I took pills and gave myself shots. It was grueling physically and emotionally. When nothing took and the doctors recommended IVF as our best hope going forward, we finally walked away. It was just too expensive, and I’d been through enough. Ironically, the few months we’d taken off from treatment throughout the year were the ones that something had happened. Chemical pregnancy and I became bed-fellows. It looks like positive tests for a few days - maybe even a week, and then nothing. It just ends, and there’s no explanation why and absolutely nothing you can do. It happened three times between 2017 and beginning of 2018, and I then I stopped counting. There’s a lot around that time that I’ve mercifully forgotten, or perhaps blocked out. The details have gone grainy. I planted a red Japanese maple for all of them and carried on as best I could.

Even as I battled depression, I took refuge in the garden, comforted by the plants and the steady march of the seasons in a way that no well-meant words ever could. After the winter comes the spring. Death and decay give way to new life. It happens every year, without fail. Seasons have boundaries. Nothing goes on forever, whether that’s a fresh day in April or a bitter one in January. And somehow, living inside this truth really, truly did help. It requires that you take the good along with the bad. One thing ends so another can begin. There are always both things to grieve and things to celebrate. The daffodils will inevitably droop their heads and turn brown, and then the tulips will rise to sing in their place. The cut flowers that grace my table one day will go on the compost heap the next, and when that happens, I cut more. As a gardener, I found I could take an active role in this dance, planting and moving, watering and feeding, staking and cutting back, all with the goal of making the show the very best it could be, all while knowing it didn’t need me. This is the unique privilege of being human.

In 2018 I decided to phase out of my current career as a boutique cake designer and transition into working with plants. After finding such meaning in partnering with the natural world as a heavy-hearted beginner, I want to point a light into what might be a dark place. You don’t have to be a professional, and you don’t have to have a garden that looks like Pinterest to gain so much joy from putting a plant in the ground or in a pot, taking care of it, and watching it grow. There’s something about this ancient process that’s in our bones. It’s fundamental. We were made to be wise caretakers of the earth.

I am pregnant now and am in awe in having become vessel for new life in a way that I’ve dreamed about for over half a decade. But in just the last year, I’ve lost a brother-in-law, and I’ve lost a sister. The garden doesn’t make any of the grief go away, but it does give me a healthy way to process. I grieve with the garden and am reborn with it in turn; I can’t imagine life any other way. Even as a woman of faith, working with the earth has helped me heal in a way that no prayer alone could. I believe it to be a less-often recognized, underutilized means of grace, a gift from a good Father to show me his heart for the seasons of my life and the ground of my soul. This is the promise that Brian and I have claimed for our son:

“Blessed is the one… whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither— whatever he does prospers.” - Psalm 1