This is what comes: a greening and a dying.

My mother sends me the eulogy she wrote for her best friend.
I imagine her sitting at her table, holding her grief in her chest,
writing for the life of her treasured friend.
I imagine this is not easy. Necessary.

She writes of a magical garden full of creatures, fireflies, and faeries.
She writes of the tending. The love. The shared laughter and rest.
She writes of imagination, excavation, and wildness. 

Of the need to never stop dreaming.

I wonder what the garden of my life will be in the end?

I wonder if this is not the point:
to tend, and weed, and grow,
allow the passing of the seasons to touch my life.

I wonder about what I choose to plant?

I remember as a girl always being amazed by my mother’s garden.
On walks she always knew all the names of the flowers. This was magic.

I’m not a good gardener. Plants tend to die in my house.
My mother’s house is full of green and blooming orchids.
But I dream of planting Echinacea.

I dream of a garden that blooms.
Where I walk barefoot, slowly, witnessing the budding and the withering.

When I read the eulogy, my heart twinges in that way
where you know that you are alive.
Tears fill my throat and flow into my eyes.

Life is precious, I think.

And I contemplate, what do I choose to plant?
What will my garden look like in the end?
What will I invite in?

Sweet fragrance, forgiveness, softly spoken stories,
Connection, dew drops, starlight…