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Dark Harvest

There’s a time and a season to every thing and every purpose. In mid October it was my mom’s time to die. Although she’d had cancer for over a year and had been in Intensive Care for nearly two weeks, it still was a shock. She’d always gotten up, always gotten better, always gone on. Until this time — her time — when she didn’t.

I’m mentioning her death on what is ostensibly a gardening site for a couple reasons. This fall, the time of year when Jan and I normally are bringing in last harvest and preserving this bounty, we were busy with other activities. The frequency of our posts here suffered as well. As we prepared a eulogy for Mom’s memorial service, it felt a bit like a harvest, a dark harvest. We gathered together the items collected and produced by her life, and we tried to preserve them as best we could. It seemed very natural to think about death as a “reaper,” a harvest worker. The very force of death as with the forces of life found in the garden is out of our full control but we were called on to ease the transition and gather up the pieces afterward.

It’s been over two months now, and I still can’t get through a day without getting stopped up short, unexpectedly struck to the point of tears. Mom and I didn’t always get along. We squabbled and fought, but I sure miss her.

If there’s anything I learned from the process of sorting through Mom’s belongings — anything like a “take away message”– it’s that I didn’t really have any idea how important a call or a letter is to a lonely person. My mom apparently saved every card she was given. Although she was generally a cheerful and optimistic person, her journals — obviously written when she was alone — spoke of profound sadness and fear. She lived a quarter of a mile away from Jan and me, she had a phone, a cell phone and computer for e-mail. She printed out the email messages she received so she could hold them, touch them. Mom was a part of our every day life but still she was lonely at times.

We made turkey rice soup this week with broth from the carcass and bits of turkey breast that might have been too dry for sandwiches. We would have eaten up every drop but without thinking too much about it, Janice took a quart of it over to the elderly woman next door, the one who lets us use her back yard to garden. This is what we must do. Don’t wait to figure out something perfect. I’d say don’t even wait for someone to tell you they’re lonely because you might not know until after the person is dead.

Find someone. Do something. Don’t think too much about it.

Posted in • Sitting Still.