Eulogy

My garden is gone. 

This picture is saved on my computer under "F U Dbag."

I knew it would happen. I knew as soon as we met the guy buying our house, a young, gum-snapping state trooper “bro,” that he wouldn’t be planting any heirloom kale that year. It looks like he took out the young apple trees that were just reaching their productive years, too. I'm so glad I didn't bring home my placenta from the hospital and plant a tree over it like I had intended, because now it would be unceremoniously sitting under a Cat tractor.

It’s not like I didn’t expect it to happen, but seeing the photo was a punch in the gut. I fought tears all morning, put on happy music in an attempt to help. Just about the only thing that calms my throat is this video.
 

That house was my mandala. I painted and polished and tweaked it exactly to my liking. I spent weeks finishing wood to build shelves. One shelf is a 200-year-old floor board I bought with my mother from a salvage place in Maine. The bathroom shelves were stained using Russian tea I brought back from Vienna. I remember building the garden when I was going through some difficult stuff, and we have funny stories about my father’s meticulousness in trying to measure it just right. I want to post pictures but it is painful enough just having them in my mind.  

I expected this. It is not our house anymore. I took a long time to mentally let go before we sold it, and I was ready. In planning this move, we took a full year just to think about doing it. Just to think about it. It’s not like I wasn’t prepared. I was even burning out on that garden, losing my enthusiasm for it two summers before we left. The constant battle with hungry creatures, the beans that didn’t get eaten, the broccoli and grapes that never produced a thing… and of course, the passport that was collecting dust, calling louder and louder. But it doesn’t mean this doesn’t hurt. Even when someone has terminal cancer for a long time, the family still cries when the end finally comes. That garden had been my dream since I was in college. It was my therapy for many years. I’d go out there when I was stressed and the soil on my hands would calm me. 

So it’s done. It’s swept up and in the river now (you had to watch the video), because nothing is permanent. My pictures and memories will last long after this pain is gone, and we are making more pictures and memories every day. I have to be content with where I am now, and I am content. I still don’t regret this. 

My daughters know where carrots come from and how fresh raw peas taste. They know the excitement of digging potatoes like finding buried treasure. They know about snacking on parsley until your mouth turns green and what it’s like to feel an errant tomato squish under your bare toes. I lived that dream of witnessing this. Someday we will grow our own food again.

But when that douchebag replaces my butcher block countertops with useless, stupid granite, I don’t want to know.