In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, as the famous poem tells us, to remind us of the valor of those who have died in war, and I think about my friend, who died in a war of her own almost a year ago to the day, a war on stage 4 lung cancer that lasted nine months. The amount of time it takes to bring a life into the world is the amount of time it took for her to leave us.
The hydrangeas were blooming as we all sat shiva with her husband and two young daughters. I don't know why I was surprised yesterday when I drove by their old house, now for sale, and saw them blooming again, the hydrangeas. I had forgotten they would, their creamy white centers and blue-tinged outer petals catching the sun as they had for years and as they would each year at this time, oblivious to memorials.
And then I stopped by this family's temple because I saw it listed in the Georgia Organics Local Food Guide under Community Gardens and I remembered what my friend's husband had told me, that his daughters had planted vegetables there in honor of their mother.
There was no sign saying in memory of my friend. Just three stone benches and twenty raised beds, some empty, waiting for hands that had yet to have a need to feel the dirt, and some overflowing with far too many squash plants, their large orange flowers straining to see the sun, and trellises with cucumber plants that had just begun their climb.
"Which ones did they plant?" I wondered, desperately wanting to know.
Yet it doesn't really matter, does it? What matters is that they planted. They put seeds into the ground and watched life emerge.
A simple search of "community garden benefits" says that community gardens bring green space to a neighborhood, build a sense of community, and restore unused property to prevent the spread of urban blight. I believe they also nourish us, both physically and mentally. And perhaps, they remind us that life goes on at the times in life when we can't imagine how.
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