Unbroken Promises

One of the most difficult and painful truths I’ve learned to live with is that when we lose someone close along with the loss of the person, there are other losses.  Collateral losses, if you will.  These are the lost future hopes, dreams, plans, and unkept promises.  Not that the departed one did not want to keep their promises, of course.  We all do. Still, intentions don’t change the facts.   For the folks left behind, it means we have to navigate our pain and sorrow, and subsequently, the faint guilt we feel for being sad that the promises never came to be.   For me, one of those promises was, quite literally, he promised me a rose garden.  

It seemed like a pipe dream at the time, honestly.  Before we could plant a rose garden we had to own our own property, and that was way outside our means. Storm was determined that I would look out every window and see a rose bush, however, so he got started.   Over the next several years he set about making that promise true.  

He grew for me, literally, buckets of roses.  Or at least, roses in buckets.  At one point, I had more than 40 rose bushes to care for.  Mostly, we cared for them.  We watered them, fed them, groomed them, and talked to them, all so that he could see me smile, which these roses never failed to do. 

The idea was that one day, some future day that was far off into the “someday,” we would move into our own home, and he would grow me a rose garden.  After he died and I began to plan my escape from our rental, I realized what a huge job all of those flowers were. 

Moving them was hard.  Very hard.  It required two runs to the new house from the old.  It wasn’t just the roses.  It was four trees in galvanized steel trash cans, grapes in a half-wine casket, and a somewhat impressive variety of houseplants.  In that U-Haul went trees and roses and all kinds of dirt and leaves, but somehow, everything that was planted in a planter, bucket, or tire got to my new house, thanks to the help of several strong people. 

That wasn’t the end of it, though.  It was really only the beginning.  Each and every one of those roses, ultimately 21 of them, had to be relocated and re-planted to their permanent home in my front yard.  It seemed overwhelming at the time.  Looking over there at that massive bunch of roses, I knew there was no way that I could do all that work.  The first year, four of them, died because I simply couldn’t keep them all watered.  Many of the houseplants died on my back porch.  I currently only have five survivors.

Still, I had to try.  Last summer, we began the process, but only got three roses moved, for various reasons.  My daughters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, and two of my grandchildren, Panda and Ziggy, helped me get those first three into the ground.  They were the most important roses for me, and I wanted them to get planted.  I waited too long to put a fourth one in, and it never rooted, and died.  I was very sad.

This summer, I wanted the job done.  Period. It was a heavy burden on my heart, and I feared they would all die if I left them there one more year. My daughter Rebecca, and her boyfriend Ian, dug a whole bunch of holes this summer. Into each and every one of those holes went a rose bush.  It was a process.  Each time the hole had to be dug, the bucket had to be hauled over to the location.  The rose had to be coaxed out of the bucket, and then the proper planting procedures (lots of water, please!!) had to happen for each one of the bushes. 

It is done.  It is actually done.  Every single one of the surviving roses is thriving in their new home.

18 in the front!  (Plus the two that already lived here.)

Over the weekend, I told my family that they had to be in by yesterday.  With fall literally right on the horizon, it was now or never. I finally planted the last rose.  Six on one side of the front, 12 on the other, making 18.  One went into the corner by the cherry tree, where it has been quite happy for the past three years, and the remaining bushes took up residence along the fence in the backyard.  I found two baby roses, bonus volunteers, in the buckets with their parents, and these also have gone into the ground, making 23 roses total.  When I get one more, to put into the last open fence panel in the back, I will have an even 2 dozen roses on my very own little property. 

As I walked among them this morning; enjoying the new blooms, checking on the recent transplants, it occurs to me that this is one promise that I was able to bring to fulfillment, even after Storm’s death.  It is one promise that I get to keep for him, through my sweat, strength, determination, and even a little blood.  Also, it happened by asking for help from the invaluable people around me.   

Together, we were able to make it true.

I got lots of other things done this summer.  Other promises brought to fruition…promises to myself, promises to me from him.  I have a garden, and I’ve been eating the food all summer.  I have a place for my dogs, and my trees, and now a place that I can plant new flowers and new trees.  Next summer I will try to have our community garden; a place for the neighbors to come and pick food to eat.  But this summer, this one summer, there is just this still half-wild space, and my beautiful roses, all exactly where envisioned them being. 

The final three

Then it rained.  Not just a drizzle, but a real, wet rain.  I sat in my dining room and ate my breakfast and watched as my Father’s creation took care of itself.  I love the rain.  I know all the songs about the rain.  I used to sing them while I walked in the rain and listened to the beat of it keep time on my umbrella and the whole world around me.  As summer comes to a close, I don’t crave the cold of fall, but I do covet the rain.  As I watched the water fall on my beautiful, completed rose garden, it felt like a special gift just for me.  Like an early birthday gift.  Thank you, Abba.  <3

This is only just a moment on the path, really, to the garden home I see in my mind.  Eventually, the garden will be paths and benches and a sturdy fence and pretty art.  I will have spinny things and plastic flamingos and a place for all the nice things.  I would like to make it a place where people want to come and sit and watch the sun cross the sky and talk about weighty and not so weighty matters.  I want to grow my food all among it, to sweeten the air and make it sparkle in the evening. 

Each day I am more grateful for the people in my life, the blessings the Father continually sends my way, and the lovely, wonderful flowers that will fill my life next summer, and all the summers to come.  May those who help me be blessed for blessing the widow.  Amen.

Song of Solomon 6:2-3 My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine; he grazes among the lilies.

As always, thanks for reading.  😊

Birthdays

Birthdays are an interesting thing in my life.  

I believe birthdays are significant.  As an amateur genealogist, it is important for me to find out when and where a person was born.  This tells me a lot, off the top, about who they are, how they are related to me, and what their life might have been like.  

As a child, mine was the only September birthday in the whole family.  I have a very large and continuously expanding family, so that seems a little interesting to me.  Thinking about it now, other than the son of one of my oldest friends, who was thoughtful enough to be born on my birthday, I can’t think of any other September birthdays.  

Even so, I’ve come to dread my own birthday.  That feels like a real butthole-ish thing to say, in my life.  I am so fortunate to have a wonderful family, who wants me to have a nice birthday.  Not having a nice birthday just seems like a crappy thing to do. 

As a kid, my birthday often happened on the first, two days after my birthday, since that’s when my parents got paid.  I can remember not really minding, except for the impatience of waiting for my gift.  When it happened, my family would make a deal out of it, as my parents tried to do for all of us.  That’s a big thing to do when you have six kids.  

The girl’s birthdays were always so much more important than mine.  I always loved making a deal out of theirs.  Hailli and Rebecca had to share, having birthdays two years and one day apart.  Elizabeth’s birthday always meant a trip to the water park, or the beach.  On my birthday, I could usually expect some construction paper cards, and a lot of hugs and kisses, which was nice. 

Before Storm, I had come to pretty much not care about my birthday.  I don’t think I care so much about it, even now.  It was Storm that cared about birthdays.  Even for people he barely knew, he would move anything to make their birthday cool.  He would borrow money. He would drive them anywhere.  He would shout, “Happy birthday!” in his amazingly loud voice and get everyone at the bar buying that person, and himself, a drink. 

Every year on my birthday, Storm was gonna make it special.  Even in years when we literally had nothing.  I remember each of the eight birthdays I spent with him.  Some of the more fun things we did was go camping at Devil’s Lake state park, in Lincoln City, OR.  It was pouring rain and freezing, but for some reason, he thought it was funny to freeze and camp for my birthday.  One year we drove over just for the day and bought ourselves some very nice Columbia chairs at the outlet mall, and ate brats over a driftwood fire, and drank beer, and watched the sun go down while our dogs slept in the sand.

After we became gardeners, my birthday became the final harvest of the year.  We would go glean everything we could, pile it on the giant desk by the front window, and take pictures.  Then we would make something yummy.  Enchiladas.  One year we canned spaghetti sauce.  We did homemade pizza.  We would use every single ingredient we could.  Even when we had no money, Storm would find me pot.  He would get me a bottle of wine.  

My 47^th birthday is approaching in 26 days.  I already don’t wanna get out of bed.  I’m going to, though.  It will be a Friday, so I am going to want to get ready for Shabbat.  My kids are going to remember, and say happy birthday, and likely I can look forward to having dinner provided for me, by some means.  I’m going to smile.  I’m going to feel happy, even.  And still, every moment of it is going to be spent missing that man with all of my heart.  

There are times I feel it less acutely these days.  In fact, most of the time, I’m pretty good.  There is plenty for me to do.  There’s plenty of love surrounding me, and I am continuously reminded that the Father cares for the widow.  Thanksgiving is continually on my lips.  

My birthday is also more than just my birthday.  All of my difficult days happen within a four-month period, starting with my birthday September 28^th, our actual anniversary November 24^th, our wedding anniversary on December 31, and then his birthday, which was January 3^rd.   Finally, his death day is February 13^th.  Winter was never my favorite season. 

I know that the healthiest thing I can do at this point is try to restructure my birthday in my heart and in my mind.  I have tried doing so, in fact.  I spent my 45^th in Israel, and I think I might try to do something cool for my 50^th, like take a hike.  Yet, even so, that heavy feeling of dread is creeping up on me.  A gathering gray cloud that just gets bigger and bigger. 

At the end of night, it will just be me, and maybe one of my cats, laying in my bed.  It’s the alone-ness that I am so new to.  I feel as if I was meant to be a good wife, and that I’ve squandered my changes.     Now it’s as if I’m just gonna be alone and that’s the way it will have to be.  That always seems to be the hardest part to get my brain around.  

Matchey, sleeping on my bed.  :)