1 March 2007: gardening and remembering

I was sure I would have another day at home to finish the novel I began during yesterday’s chilly non-working weather:  The Brief History of the Dead, one of three fantasies I have read with fascinating theories about the afterlife.  But by eleven, the rain had stopped and a tentative foot outside revealed that the cold had lifted enough to be bearable.

I had been wanting to get to L____’s  garden (am using the Jane Austen style of naming to respect her privacy) because it was brand new late last summer and a garden in which I have extra emotion invested.  We first made a tiny memorial garden there for a kitty named “Whitey”; L_____ showed us a photo of the big white sweet cat and she had a couple of cat sculptures, a birdbath, a stone bench, and an angel and a plaque which I had seen before and which always makes me think of my good old cat Orson.

We took all the elements and created a quiet corner where rests Whitey and another loved cat, Colby. Instead of enclosing the whole corner with the little fence as it had been before, we left a welcoming opening and made a little path to the bench for sitting and communing with the kitty spirits. I added some white stones from my own favourite stones collection.  L____, out of town the day we made the garden, sent me the most moving email I have ever gotten about our work:

“I am so glad that you enjoyed making Whitey’s memorial garden for me.  I LOVE what you did.  It has brought tears already but even more, real joy. (Did I tell you I love it!!)  Whitey was a very special cat who lived with us for 13 years before he died in our arms of liver cancer in December 2001.  (Colby, the cat I mentioned that died last month was 18! She was a pretty cool cat too.) Thanks again Skyler.  You are very talented and I’m blessed to have you work for me.  Thanks to you and Allan both for your hard work and lovely results.”

From there, we cleaned up and edged the driveway entry garden, and then moved in to create the most important garden we have ever done, a memorial to L’s beloved husband R___, a gentle man who had died earlier that year.  He loved to fish and loved the colour blue, so of course blue and softly purple flowers will figure large in this garden: Lavender, Catmint, Eryngium (sea holly), Penstemon, blue oat grass, blue fescue, grape hyacinths, Iris reticulata….The deer walk through so deer-resistance is a factor.  We made a flower garden along the hill, and around some shore pines a dry creek bed with fish sculptures leaping upstream.

Most of this we accomplished over two days while she was gone, as we wanted to surprise her with a fait accompli….The whole time I felt a presence as if I were communicating with someone who would appreciate the blue flowers.  I especially like doing the stream because my father also used to go steelhead fishing.  On the path (which we cleared and raked) through the “to the beach” arch and up the knoll is a boat which we filled with flowers…R____and L____ used to tell their friends that the boat beached itself there on a high tide.

Again, we got a wonderful message from L____, and felt this was the most worthwhile project we ever created.

We learned something practical, too, a revelation that came to me while we laid the rocks over a base of landscape fabric for the dry stream: Put down a layer of pretty, matching SMALL river rock first, so the fabric is fully covered; THEN put down your big and mixed rocks.  Thus you don’t have to struggle to get the big rocks to cover every bit of the fabric (because the underwear must not show!)

Three books with moving and fascinating ideas about the afterlife:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Passage by Connie Willis

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

“In one sense there is no death.  The life of a soul on earth lasts beyond his or her departure.  You will always feel that life touching yours, that voice speaking to you, The spirit looking out of others’ eyes, talking to you in the familiar things he touched, worked with, loved as a familiar friend.  He lives on in your life and in the lives of all others that knew him.” *Angelo Patri