Hello,
It’s June, perfect June- warm and bright in the middle of the day, cool and rainy at night. The garden is a luscious, verdant green getting ready to erupt into flowers. I’m stunned by it. We spent an unexpected two weeks in Michigan and came back to a changed yard. The potatoes that I planted in buckets of good soil hoisted over the fence by neighbor Mike are growing at an almost perceptible rate. We missed all but the last of the irises and suddenly there are daylily buds thrusting upwards on lanky stalks. Half of the bulbs I planted did not come up, but the ones that did are huge. The neighbors cleaned up some more of the yard while we were away- they raked the pine needles into a neat pile and dug out the caved in fire pit. I brought home a fern found on the curb of my parents’ block. It rode the ferry in the back of the car, and now it’s sprawled under the pine. All of the porch flowers died in our absence, except for the petunias that Tavi planted with her grandma Joyce in mind. I was glad to see them, bright and cheery in their hard packed dirt.
Joyce parented Tavi, and for ten years met me with beaming kindness each time I stepped through her door. While we were in Michigan we stepped in as her end of life caregivers. We did our best to shroud her in love as she marched resolutely towards death, and she was a loving and gracious recipient of our ministrations. We were aided in this endeavor by the community we’ve always returned to since leaving our hometown. Wonderful family, friends, and neighbors who, once apprised of our task, stepped in to hold us however they could. After Joyce died we were handed babies, poured drinks and fed plates of food. We were listened to and when our eyes glazed over from grief and exhaustion we were gently talked over, tucked under the rolling tide of conversations started before our arrival and continuing, I assume, after our departure.
In the week since we returned home the squirrels took my prickly pear and then brought it back to the same spot, slightly chewed. I walked miles and read two books. I washed all of Joyce’s shirts in preparation for turning them into quilts. I harvested mint and pulled ragweed from the mushroomy soil under the pines. There has been a clarity to my days that wasn’t there before. Like the garden I, too, am greatly changed. Witnessing death amid such kindness grounded me in myself. It stripped away all pretenses. I saw my sweetheart as a caregiver and was awed by her intuition and gentleness in that role. I will never forget her turning to me in the depths of our exhaustion and saying “now we know how to help our friends through this”. With the bright, heightened memories of those days with Joyce knocking around in my head I keep finding a deeper appreciation for life. A stronger desire to live fully and with wonder. Since coming home I’ve probed my days for the moments when I feel most alive and resolved to shed those habits* that keep me from being so.
Grief is, as I have always found it, a weird and lonely companion. A good time for the garden and for stitching baskets. A difficult bedfellow. I’ve taken comfort in the counter-actions I’ve learned from past losses- gifts, I think, from the people we no longer have in physical form. Joyce gave us a bounty of lessons to choose from and Tavi and I wonder over them together. The petunias flourish on the porch- I’ve added another pot, sunset hued. It’s June and everything is a wonder.
*One such “habit” is Instagram. It’s not so much that I witnessed death and immediately thought “I should stop using IG”, but rather that I realized (or… finally admitted) that consuming a curated-for-capital facsimile of the world while slumped over a screen does not feel like living to me. There was a time when it did- and I’m grateful for the relationships and ideas that burst forth from that short period. I look forward to the next thing that will foster that sort of experience, and to the one after that.
When She Talks I Hear the Revolution Quilt
Jane and I made this quilt together through the mail over 5 or 6 years (I think? We did not document this project at all!). I’ve worked on it in four different apartments. We put everything into it- fabrics we loved, fabrics we found. Patches. Weird shit. Looking at it now I can see where we mirrored one another and where we went rogue and just used what we had on hand. We had planned to finish the quilt together… maybe by a lake somewhere… with a lot of snacks and a nice view… perhaps a dog frolicking at our feet… but life has been dealing Jane a heavy hand this year and that future felt like one this quilt couldn’t really wait for. So I finished it here in Milwaukee. I pieced together a soft back and quilted the whole thing with my prettiest variegated thread. I bound it in pink Kona cotton from the Quilt Museum rummage sale and red scraps from the perfect thrifted shirt. We named it after Rebel Girl because Jane loves Bikini Kill and I love Jane.
oh grace, you words are ever the balm. no matter the topic, no matter the season - you capture it with such clarity and care.
Thank you for writing this and sharing - your words and care make a difference.