The Circle of Life

On a beautiful spring day in 2002, I found myself preparing to sell my

Parents’ old home place, since my mom had passed away and my 94 year-

old dad was in very poor health and confined to a nursing home. It was hard

to believe that it had only been a couple of years since my mom passed

away.


Mama had been ill with heart problems for some time, and had developed

congestive heart failure in the months prior to her death. After treatment at a

local hospital and a few months of rehabilitation, she suddenly seemed to be

regaining her strength and becoming more like her old self. So it was a

terrible shock when I received a phone call in the middle of the night

informing me that she had been hospitalized and might not live through the

night. Her death was the most traumatic and life changing event that I had

experienced during my 47 years.

After my mom passed away, my brothers and I continued to employ a live-in

sitter who had been taking care of Mom and Dad since my mother’s health

had declined. My dad had severe dementia, but we wanted to try to keep him

at home as long as possible.

My brother Neil and I had been against selling the house, especially since

my dad was still alive, but it had been sitting vacant for quite a while and

then one day some teenagers broke in and had a beer party, with candles

burning in the house. At that point we decided we had to do something.

My two brothers and I had been working extremely hard trying to get

everything cleaned out of the house and several outbuildings, and trying to

figure out how to disperse of all of the items. We actually had to clean out

TWO houses, because we were also selling what had formerly been my aunt

and uncle’s house, right next door to my parents. My brothers and I had

bought the house many years ago, after my aunt and uncle died. We had

decided to buy it and rent it out, because the property had been part of my

grandfather’s farm. Also my dad used a good part of my aunt and uncle’s

land to plant his garden every year, and we wanted him to be able to

continue that.

We finally got everything moved out of both houses and then we bought a

big “For Sale” sign and put it up next to the road. It sold more quickly than

we had ever anticipated, in just a few weeks.

For the last couple of years it had been very depressing to go to my parent’s

house, even when my dad was still living at home, but all of a sudden it

became a reality to me that I would never be able to go home again. Now

someone else would be calling this place home.

All I could think about was when I was a child, growing up in that house and

playing in the woods with my friends. I thought of my grandparents, my

aunts, uncles, and cousins who also lived on part of the land that had once

been my grandparent’s farm. Almost all of those people have passed away

now. The woods where I used to play had well-worn paths made by my

brothers and me, and the children who walked to and from the local

elementary school through those same woods. When I was a little girl Daddy

built a wooden bridge across the creek that ran through the woods so that we

could walk to school through the woods.

Now the paths have disappeared from lack of use, and the woods are

covered with poison ivy and poison oak. Just one more reason for the angst I

had been feeling as I cleaned out my parent’s house.

After we put up the “For Sale “ sign, there was only one thing I could think

of. I had to get over there as quickly as possible and dig up some of Mama’s

flowers so that they wouldn’t be lost to me forever. Mama loved her flowers,

as did I. She had a few flowers and bushes that came from her parent’s

house. I guess when her own parents died she had the same idea that I had. It

seemed like a way to keep my mom alive in my memory. So I planned to

make a day of it, and I got a shovel and made the trip to their house.



I dug up as many flowers as I could: jonquils, roses, hostas, spiderwort,

irises, daylilies, black-eyed Susans, and many others. She had so many

flowers, and they were so crowded together, that I figured no one would

even notice the ones I took. I was even careful to only take part of the hosta,

and not the entire plant, so the new owners could enjoy them, too. I got three

new plants from the small section that I took.. Since it was still early spring,

some of the flowers had yet to break the surface of the earth, but I knew

where to dig from memory.

I then proceeded to my aunt and uncle’s old house with the intention of

digging up one or two rose bushes. My aunt had the most beautiful rose

garden. But when I arrived I found the garden in a terrible condition,

apparently ravaged by recent droughts. Most of the roses were either dead or

in very bad condition. It takes a lot of neglect to kill a rose, I thought to

myself.

As I dug up the flowers that day, a million thoughts raced through my mind,

most of them incredibly sad. Never again would I walk through those

woods. Never again would I be able to stop by my grandparents’ house, or

the house of one my aunts, just to have some company, some interesting

conversation, and maybe some good food or a cup of tea. No more happy

family get-togethers on holidays or birthdays at my parent’s house. No more

parents. No more childhood home. So is this what life was all about? Losing

the people you love and trying somehow to go on without them? I can’t

remember when I have ever cried as many tears as I did that day. The entire

front of my shirt was soaking wet from wiping my eyes and nose. I would

have given anything for box of tissues that day. I prayed that my friend,

(who had been house sitting my parents’ house until the new owners were

ready to occupy it) wouldn’t come home and find me in such a state of

dishevelment; with make-up running all over my face, a snotty nose, and

covered in dirt.

When I realized that my aunt’s rose garden was a lost cause, I looked around

to see if there was anything else I could possibly dig up. It was getting late

and I knew I still had to hurry home and get everything planted in my own

yard before dark. Suddenly I looked up and saw a big Mimosa tree. I

remember when I was a little girl; thinking that one day when I grew up and

got married I wanted to have a Mimosa tree in my yard. Too bad there was

no way to move something that big. Then I looked around at the yard, which

hadn’t been mowed in a long time, and I noticed that there were Mimosa

seedlings everywhere! So I took 3 of them and then I wrapped everything in

damp newspapers and prepared to drive home.



I worked to the point of exhaustion trying to get everything planted before

dark, planting things in a very hap hazardous way, just to get them into the

dirt. When I got tired of digging, I threw them into pots filled with potting

soil. I figured if any of the plants didn’t make it, at least I had done my best.

I didn’t think I had the strength to dig up the two roses that my mom had

loved, an ancient miniature, cluster-type rose that had belonged to my dad’s

sister and had been in the family for many decades, and Mama’s favorite

rose, the Tropicana rose that I had given to her on Mother’s Day many

years ago, when my own children were still young. So I called my friend and

he said he would dig them up for me and bring them to my house.

Somehow as I worked furiously to get those flowers into the ground, a

healing process began within my soul. Even the smell of the wet earth

seemed to have a healing effect on me. I encountered many earthworms as I

dug, and the thought came to me that the earthworm and I were working as

partners: I would plant the flowers, and the earthworm would aerate and

enrich the soil for me. Funny the thoughts that run through your mind when

you get out into nature in the kind of emotional state that I was in that day.

By the time darkness fell, I was in a much better state of mind. I knew that I

had done all that I was physically capable of doing to try to preserve the

memories of my mom and her love for flowers, and somehow I was trying to

hold on to the sweet memories of my childhood, too. I knew that my dad

would be very happy to know that some of Mama’s flowers were being

preserved in my yard, hopefully for future generations to enjoy.

Although I did feel better that evening, it wasn’t until the next spring that I

truly felt peace and joy in my soul as I watched the flowers come up again

that next year. Unfortunately my little Mimosa seedlings didn’t make it. I

forgot to warn my son Eli about them and he accidentally ran them over with

the riding lawn mower. But I couldn’t worry myself about that. After all, I

had done the best I could. It was around Easter time when I saw the flowers

returning once again, and I was reminded of Christ’s resurrection from the

dead, which gives us blessed assurance of eternal life and the opportunity to

be reunited with those loved ones who have gone on before us.


We all suffer loss from time to time, but such is the nature of this life, and

Springtime always comes around again. Or as my mother and her mother

before her used to say, “Time changes everything”.