But the slime, y’all. Seriously. Green plant slime. I wish now that I had stopped to take a photo for you.
Earlier this year, I shared the story of my daughter’s faith as she found, planted, watered, and believed for the growth of her Oomah’s expired garden seeds. She seems to have inherited that pearls and slime gardening spirit from my mother and grandmother, because honestly – several of those sprouts are still growing and I still have no idea what they are. How that gardening spirit skipped me, I’ll never know, but again, folks – the cactus. No green thumbs for me.
I was missing mom at Easter. It was her favorite holiday. The hymns, the ham, the sunrise service, even the cultural bunnies – she loved it all, and this year, all of it had me missing her even more than usual. I felt, somehow, that putting my fingers into the slime and dirt of her windowsill babies would do me good. Maybe I hoped it would help me to touch something she had touched. Maybe I hoped it would help to spend time face-to-face with my sorrow rather than shoving it aside while I pushed through other responsibilities, as I do most days. Maybe I hoped, after all, that even a cactus killer could green-thumb-it like her momma on Easter weekend.
Besides which, I had a stash of small glass jars that I refused to garbage, because… why? I paid for yogurt in glass jars; I was going to make use of those glass jars!
So I rolled up my sleeves, turned on one of my momma’s Easter (and all-time) favorites, Handel’s Young Messiah (1990), and began the absolutely mortifying work of pulling apart the gunky green cuttings from her windowsill.
The work was slow. It reminded me of the care and gentility mom would use untangling her yarn. ‘It takes patience and faith,’ she would say, ‘and someone who believes it can be more than a knot. You look at this tangle and see a mess; I look at it and see a hat for a homeless person this winter.’ So I did my very best to emulate my mother, and I slowly unraveled the knot of slick roots. As I worked, I realized there were more than spider plant roots. There were also cuttings from a snake plant and some kind of ivy mom had grown in her kitchen for years. Each one, saved by her in her last months. Cuttings left in a plastic mayonnaise jar on the eastern facing windowsill. I coaxed them gently. I even sang to them and whispered encouragement. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I was determined.
I wept as I worked. Each tender root, so neglected yet so apparently eager to thrive, felt like a cutting from my own heart, slimed and knotted in the grief of having lost my beautiful mother to such a tragic disease.
And one by one, with sudden surrender, the plants grew loose and limp in my hands as they finally released the other plant roots to which they’d been clinging for at least six months. They were free, but they were weary and vulnerable – and so was my heart.
I used all the potting soil I had in the kitchen and imposed upon my husband’s secret stash (I won’t spend the time describing how much loamier and richer my husband’s soil is than my own – that’s how bad a gardener I am: even my dirt is substandard), and I potted in glass jars and small plastic pots every cutting my mother had left on the windowsill.
Because maybe some things are worth saving.
Maybe some things are worth the time.
Maybe some things are worth the tears.
Maybe some roots are worth burying.
From my heart to yours,
Sarah, you have me in tears. Some things are worth saving, some roots are worth burying. Thank you for this raw and beautiful meditation on grief.
Darlin… some things ARE worth saving. Some roots ARE worth burying.
Thank you for joining me. This has been a hard journey for me; it helps to have friends along the way who recognize “raw and beautiful” nature of grief. 💜
Yet again, you have me right there with you. I can see it, I can feel it, and I can hear it. I can’t keep anything alive either, but my parents and grandparents were excellent at it! I have even killed succulents!! I have one plant right now that was given to me by a student, this time last year. Amazingly, it’s still alive!! I even forgot and left it over Christmas vacation at school with the furnace turned down!! I don’t even know what kind it is. I’m pretty sure, you are helping me weed through my grief as I read your writings. Most of the time, I try to tell myself, ” That’s life, they are in Heaven, and in no way would wish to be here. I wouldn’t even wish them here instead of there…” so I usually don’t let myself grieve, I don’t have time, it doesn’t make sense, but I miss them terribly.