Spring sprang

The sun was out today and i was on my knees in the dirt trying to get my flower beds into shape. I was digging around what’s left of the snowdrops and thought about Pat Lahue, who, when we met after moving to the country almost twenty years ago, was already an elderly woman. She took care of her ailing husband, ran the PRRP and was a fellow member of the Abercorn Women’s Institute. She had me come up to her little white farmhouse at the end of a rutted driveway and pushed a dozen tiny bulbs into my hand. She shrugged off my thanks. Her husband died not long after and she followed him some years later. Her snowdrops are the first things to fight their way through the snow in my garden. That first hint of green bolsters my faith that winter will indeed end and makes me think of her no-nonsense approach and her unexpected sense of humour, the kind that hits you twenty minutes after you’ve said goodbye.

I started pulling out bishop’s weed and the sweet williams which seem hell-bent on taking over the whole garden and thought of Susie Briscoe and her steadfast reluctance to weed. She would probably have qualified what I was doing as cruel as she looked on the plants in her overgrown yard as welcome visitors. I remember the little artsy piles of stickers peeled off organic fruit that peppered her countertops and the elegance of her mess.

The irises and lupins made me think of my dad. An enthusiastic but entirely ungifted gardener, his stubborn determination to try to grow the most unsuitable perennials in the acidic soil beneath the pines at the cottage meant that every spring he pretty much had to start over. My mum tells me that lupin was the only flower name he could remember so every flower he admired became a lupin. It’s been eight months since he died and despite the fact that he wasn’t present for the end of his life, I’m grateful that he didn’t have to live through the lockdown and its enforced solitude.

The sun warms my shoulders and it feels like I’m unearthing all these people as I pry my fingers into the soil. Is this where the afterlife is? After all, the ground is where our remains remain. As I get older, the number of dead people that keep me company grows larger. So many of them were people I loved. I wonder, if one is lucky enough to live to a ripe old age, whether once the balance tips and more of one’s friends are dead than alive, if the weight of their presence pulls you toward them or just makes you dig your heels in to stay stubbornly alive. Either way, their peaceful presence in my garden and in my hands and in my life brings a bittersweet, meditative note to this chore.

I think about my friend who just lost the father of her three kids to COVID. I don't suppose peace is what they or any of the other thousands of mourning families are feeling. I do hope the peace comes.