By Shannon Williams
Grief is defined as, “our emotional reaction to loss”. It has been studied, written about and talked about since it became part of the English Language some 800+ years ago, and the Latin roots of the word goes back much further. It is where I have been for the past couple of months. In March, we said goodbye to our 95-year-old mother and sent her on the journey, both to return to our heavenly father, but hopefully to be welcome by my father.

I know about grief, I too have studied it and years ago in another time, I facilitated grief groups, but none of that really matters when it is the grief of losing your remaining parent. Mom was tired and expressed many times she just wanted to die. She lived 11 years without my father and it was 11 years too long, according to her. So, it was not a sad death, all of her children (there were five of us) outlived her and had seen her in recent days. Her three grandchildren all came home to say goodbye. We knew her suffering was over. She had left detailed notes of how she wanted her funeral to be, and you had to know her to get some of what she requested. She did not want a eulogy, as she said she did not want anyone making a saint out of her! She did not want Amazing Grace played, as she had too many hymns that she loved and she “wanted to hear them one last time”. I am most grateful that Texas Tech has a great music school as we were able to find someone to sing Ava Maria in Latin, and she had requested that it be sung in Latin, as that is the language she worshiped in as a child.

Her affairs were all in order, so many things had already been done, so we gathered to be together, to pray together and try and figure out what life would be like. We buried her on March 18th, so the night before we cooked corn beef and cabbage to share together, just as we had done growing up. When you live to be 95, you really don’t have many friends to attend your service, but maybe you get a big welcoming crowd when you enter the gates of Heaven. I knew the grief would be different than Dad’s as now the family really had to figure out how to balance without the love of our mother who kept it a family. But, this grief has been so physical, my mind is mush, I am not terribly sad, but struggle to focus on most everything I do. I kept telling myself, I was just tired from going back and forth to Lubbock, for missing so much work and home chores, and that once I got caught up, I would get my focus back. I know you go in and out of the stages of grief, but mine just looked so weird, I really had nothing to be angry about, but had feelings of anger about things that took place years ago, when I labeled it as grief, I was able to let it go, but I could not understand why I was just mad.

Mom wanted a bag piper to play Scotland the Brave, just as we had done for my father. It was their song in many ways, and just like when they did the gun salute for my father, I got overwhelmed hearing the bagpipes, but it was a joy that she would once again be by my fathers’ side.

For the past several years, I would call mom each day, not wanting to burden her with any of my struggles, we would often talk about gardening. That is where my love of gardening comes from. I remember many long talks with my mom, while she was pulling weeds or feeding her rose bushes, it was just a time, that she was relaxed and thus great conversations took place. We were able to plant a couple of trees outside her window at the assisted living and she loved to watch them bloom and see the birds. I would take pictures of my garden and send them to her caretakers for her to see, she loved to see the pictures of all the hibiscus in bloom.

My garden is like my grief, all over the place. The second home I owned in West Texas was built in 1929 and we were the second owners of the house. The garden beds were overgrown and thus we pulled them all out to start over. I had a landscaper come in and design a garden for me. It looked wonderful on paper, but I never really liked it, it was just too uniform and plants do not grow as they are drawn on paper.

When I put a small garden in down here, I just planted what I liked and not in any order or system, again, it is like me; little parts of a whole lot of things that may or may not go together, but in my life, they fit just fine. I love to plant blooming plants that I have been given, so I have Easter lilies, tulips and even an Amaryllis. I have my dear bluebonnets and could not think of a garden without Lantana and Turks Caps (they were one of the few things that would grow in West Texas). Gardens are like grief in many ways, in that you do your best but have such little control about what grows and what does not. I planted 4 oleanders bushes, 3 have lived though 3 freezes but one did not make it through the first one, the remaining 3 bushes have grown at different rates and one blooms much better than the other two. So even though they started out with the same factors and experienced the weather all the same, they thrive very different from the other ones. They grow like grief in their own way, they figure out how to do the best they can and go from there. I can get all kinds of advice and read all sort of stuff on gardening, but in the end, each plant grows his own way and thus we each grief in our way. When I send a sympathy card, I wait and send it about a month after the loss has taken place. I do that as by that time, most people expect you to be over it, but most times you are just coming too, to try and figure it all out, so I send it then to let people know that the process is long and belongs to each of us. I need to do better at giving myself that same advice, as I keep asking people, how long does the fog last and you know they don’t know the answer any more than I do.

My team at work sent me a little garden plaque when mom died. They knew I liked my garden, so they thought it would be good and I love it, it is a little reminder of Mom in my crazy little garden where everything does its own thing. I have included a couple of pictures of some of my flowers, as I miss terribly not being able to share them with mom.

[SW: May-7-2024]