Give Up the Ghost

I couldn’t figure out why I have SO resisted this spring.

To say I was sick of winter would be a gigantic understatement.

The forsythias were in full bloom when my mom’s yellow beetle car pulled down the driveway and she delivered the news she had cancer again. The double-headed pink peonies were in full bloom two years later when she left this place.

April is the cruelest month.

It never becomes less crushing. In fact, I would say although the sharp, unbearable pain relinquishes its hold after a while, the resistance to certain things becomes hauntingly invisible.

It haunts because it appears disembodied from any original source.

In fact, quite honestly not until writing this piece could I see why I have resisted going out, contracted a terrible head cold, dissolved into tears over biting my tongue too hard, spilling hot coffee all over my hand and being left alone for too long.

It didn’t make sense, until I realized I’ve been battling a ghost.

How can you win a battle against something that doesn’t exist?

So, I asked myself what is this ghost, really?

My mother was a master gardener. My interest in gardening has blossomed after she died and now I am painfully cognizant of all she could have taught me. Of all I don’t know.

Spring leaves me feeling like a child.

Needy. Inept. Unsure how to nurture life from winter’s dead.

The soil, the seeds, the rain– even the sun seems more threatening than it ever did. I don’t want anyone else doing our planting but I do not trust myself. Finally, this past week we mulched our property.

I began researching which mulch to use, my body pre-tensed for ignorance and braced for the challenge of navigating marketing hooey, when I saw the words and heard her voice say, “Sweet Peet. It’s the best. More expensive but worth it.”

My relief was indescribable.

I would not be alone. If I begin, if I step into it, instead of hiding from it, we can do it together. I am still flat scared of doing it wrong. Still miss her in ways words could never capture.

BUT, the ghost is not hers. It is the accumulated, coagulated fear that I will not be enough. That my best will fail. That I will be unable to honor what I have most loved.

When those we love die, we wither and grow, wither and grow.

In an endless season of ending and becoming.

By leaving, she forced me to grow in ways I never could or would have if she were here. Since I can’t take her back, I take her in.

The parts we lean on most, we have the opportunity to become.