How to Never Forget the Losses

One of two terrapins traveling on its annual pilgrimage through my parents' yard.

I'm fond of Facebook...and I think most of my friends are aware of my "addiction." I manage Facebook pages for a few clients, so it's second nature for me to toss up a photo or a pithy saying on a daily basis on my own wall or pages while at that site. While this habit has become...a habit, I've realized lately that my additions to Facebook have become somewhat of a diary.

In my searches for what has happened in my life over the past two years, I've suffered pangs of hurt, sadness, and even utter and bitter loss over and over again. That pain has worsened with the new Facebook "look what happened on this day last year...or two years ago...or even a decade ago..." feature. Although I'm sure this daily reminder of the past is meant well, it can shake my socks off sometimes.

This morning, for instance, I was whacked in the face with the image of the terrapin shown here. Yes, it's just a turtle. But, it's one of two turtles that make an annual pilgrimage through my parents' yard. These two turtles...or their relatives...have been traipsing through my folks' yard since they moved here in 2000. The turtles just don't pass through. They stick around for a few days, playing hide-and-seek with each other and with us in the gardens before they move on.

While at some other point in my life I might have thought warmly about this photo and its family tradition, I happened to glance at the photos that braced that turtle image in my Facebook "mobile uploads" album. Those photos portrayed our first visit to the teaching hospital where mom was first diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma. We had just returned from that city to discover the turtles in the yard, exactly two years ago today.

I'm glad I have this chronicle of events that happened over the past two years, because those clues are vital for writing the memoir. But, I'm not very keen on how I keep getting pinched by the past in the most unexpected ways. Sometimes, I feel as though I'm picking at a scab. What saddens me further is that we haven't seen the terrapins yet this year.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe I'll get lucky and see them before I have to return home this upcoming weekend. And, maybe one day I'll truly be grateful for the memories.

Memoir Progress Update

One rebuilt garden bed with new mulch!

The support I've received for this project so far has been wonderful. As of this writing, 43 individuals provided $1,184. This is enough money for me to pay expenses incurred during this campaign, to pay for an editor, and to pay for two days at a four-day poetry retreat in November with the Green River Writers to edit a few poems that are going into the memoir. I plan to get a lot done in those two days.

Next up -- paying for a month or two in seclusion to finish the memoir. Just to be perfectly clear, this time does not exclude regular work for clients. Instead, it is to finance travel to one of several writers' retreats (if I'm chosen), or to pay for a getaway from the chaos at home to have quiet time to finish my research and writing. My family WANTS me to leave to finish this project, so help them out! =)

In other news:

• This is my last week at dad's house. I've finished weeding and separating the flowers in mom's garden beds (all ten of them), weeded along the fence and around the trees, and had mulch delivered for the front beds. The mulch for the back beds is arriving after I leave. I used mom's new garden gloves that she purchased before she died and never used, and I poked holes in the ends of the fingers. Dad said, "I'm sure she won't mind." Despite my initial fears over tackling my mother's gardens, I think I did fine by her.
• Packing to return home includes items from around the house that dad wants me to sell. I have to put on my "impersonal" persona when conducting this work, because I feel as though I'm selling memories. On the other hand, it feels great to downsize, and I'm conducting this activity on the homefront as well so I can relieve my daughter from this task upon my death. I never realized I inherited my "hoarder gene" from mom. I've learned since mom's death how to hide that hoarding (in drawers, closets, and the attic!). I'll post more items to my Etsy shop (GoinOriginals) next week. Sending a "thank you" to my new customers at that venue!
• It appears no one has really taken me up on the contest challenge yet. Too bad! But, there's still time to compete (until November 24th!).
• It appears that folks are taking me up on my $1 birthday wish challenge at the Cancer, Caregiving, Contentious Love Indiegogo site! Wonderful! Those dollar bills add up! (hint for those who want to compete in the previously mentioned challenge -- I'm trying to help you!)
• Thanks again to Denise at Caregiving.com for offering a new space to blog about my caregiving adventures with dad. Latest post: My Fears About Leaving Dad Alone.

Since I'm busy packing and traveling over the next two days, I won't be posting anything here until Friday. Be good, take care, and be happy if you can. <3

I Made the Grade on the Garden Hurdles Today

The first three plants to feel the spade.

Yesterday I started on mom's garden beds, the ones that hadn't been tended to in over two years because of mom's illness. Oh, they've been weeded, but the plants (mostly perennials) are overgrown and crowding each other out. It's not a pretty sight. So, I began by tackling the weeds in the front bed, what little were left of them. Then I stood and looked around at that bed and at the three other beds within my eyesight. I had to get serious.

To get serious with mom's gardens meant that I needed another 24 hours to bolster myself. I never, in my lifetime, could imagine myself taking a shovel to mom's beds. I never learned to cook from mom, because she said I made her too nervous in the kitchen. For the same reason, I never learned to garden from mom. I learned everything I knew from library books and from experimentation.

Mom was the Master Gardener.

This morning, I awoke and committed to a little writing. Then, I played around on Facebook and Twitter. I read a few articles and ate some yogurt. Then, I changed into my 'gardening clothes' and went to the garage. I needed talismans, so I donned my mother's old gardening shoes, her new gardening gloves (that she never wore), picked up her gardening tools and the shovel and went back to the front bed.

After pacing and eyeballing everything, I went back inside. I needed to consult with dad (can you sense a bit of procrastination here?). After he confirmed my ideas, I took the shovel, and I dug. And, I dug and I dug and I dug. I dug up all the perennials in that top half of the front bed, separated them, and replanted them. The task took two hours.

I knew what I was doing. I did. And, now I'm over those hurdles -- the hurdle of worrying about destroying mom's garden or the hurdle of her striking me dead for touching anything. It's all good. The garden and I will survive.

Traveling Today

On the road, heading into another round of a few weeks with dad. Our goals: to fix mom's gardens, to talk to a few auctioneers, and to get more things packed and sent to my daughter. Most of mom's things are going to my daughter.

Does my daughter want these things? No. But, she has choices. I'll help her with them. What a burden to be the only blood grandchild.

The Master Gardener

One of the reasons I'm returning to the folks' house this weekend is to help sort out mom's landscaping. Mom's work on the yards surrounding the homes they lived in over the years was the main reason their homes sold so quickly. She honed her skills in South Carolina at Clemson, where she took classes and was awarded with a Master Gardener certification.

When the buyer walked up to the front door of that house to look around, dad opened the door and the buyer looked at my dad and said, "SOLD." He was so impressed with the work around the house that the house mattered little.

I can never hope to be the gardener my mother was. For one thing, I'm too wishy-washy. I would leave a plant in the ground, not wanting to disturb it, and it would be swallowed by the plant next to it. Mom, on the other hand, was efficiently brutal. I remember watching her pull weeds for the first time -- I was startled by the ferocity she displayed in uprooting anything that didn't fit into her scheme.

That scene brings up so much garbage that it's difficult to sort through all the implications.

That said, I was proud to introduce my mother to various plants, and I gave her some of mine over the years. The lamb's ears that I provided needs to be separated. The helliobore needs to be moved to a shadier location. Her bulbs all need to be dug up and separated. I have plans, and I hope none of this work takes too much time or effort.

Mom couldn't get into her gardens during the last two years of her life. In spring of 2013, she was too sick, and the bulbs needed separating even then. This past spring, she ordered me to take her to the garden shop, where she purchased garden clogs, gloves, some new tools, and other odds and ends. When she died, those items were still in the garage, all sporting their price tags. She had no energy for the work, and she totally lost interest during the last two months of her life. Even the height of the grass or the deer munching on her ground covers didn't seem to bother her, topics that would constantly spark heated discussions between my parents in the past.

I have no qualms about using mom's garden tools. I've already made them mine. My concern is about saving her plans and her work so dad can use her skills to sell the house when it comes time. Why am I doing this? Because it's in all our best interests.

So say the daffodils, those poor squashed-together bulbous entities that I can hear talking to me from two states away.

** The photo is one I took in 2013, showing the bane of my mother's life -- the deer that would snack on my mother's gardens with impunity. They would eat even those plants that were considered "deer resistant."