Where the garden was…
A real hard thing happened today and I’ve been flooded with grief. I stayed up very late writing last night. I got up early because my sixteen-year-old son Paul had soccer practice. Paul had his buddy Jackson spend the night. This morning they were like little boy zombies.
The landscape/gardening people arrived and started working as I went back to bed and the boys limped out to the car. I live in a virtual jungle of Minnesota summer vegetation. It’s amazing how quickly my lot gets overgrown. On a monthly basis, my house virtually disappears into the beautifully encroaching green of Mother Nature. The workers came to hack me out.
I tried to re-rack another hour of sleep as the weed-whackers were grinding their way through some of the foliage. Of course they seemed to be right out my bedroom windows the whole time. After an hour, I gave up and fully greeted my day. As I looked out the window, I realized a twenty-something kid had just finished weed-whacking the garden my ex-wife Jennifer had painstaking created in honor of our dead son William.
William died at thirty-four weeks in-utero. I watched the birth of William and Paul at thirty-seven and a half weeks. This experience is described in the closing chapter of my book, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence. Witnessing their births was the catalyst for my outward work in the world. I started writing Waking the next month and formed my non-profit Mind Body Solutions two months after that.
The only way I knew William while he was alive was through rubbing vitamin E on Jennifer’s pregnant belly. I would try to touch each of my sons and, if I was lucky, I might get one or both of them to move. We started to notice that William didn’t move as much as his brother, so much so that we called him Sweet William. Holding William lifeless in my arms after he was born is the only time I will ever touch him directly. Otherwise, I have only known my firstborn son through loss.
Today that loss was ignited. It’s hard to stay connected to a son that you never got to touch while living. This garden was our symbolic way. Jennifer and I split up six years ago but we are still friends. She lives six blocks away and we still very actively parent together. Unfortunately, I am not a gardener and the garden did not get the attention it deserved. It would get overgrown with the rest of the awesome jungle. To any outward eye, it might appear that William’s garden did not matter. Judging from my tears today, this is not the case.
As human beings, we charm things. We can put ourselves and our magic into and through objects. Those plants were not just growing in that garden, but they also occupied a secret place in the center of Jennifer’s and my heart. Those plants are an outer manifestation of an inner reality, an inner secret….a love that lives only through our sensation of loss.
Today those plants went down and a rupture of emptiness and rawness cascaded through my chest and eyes. We are amazing creatures. The hope is that those plants will grow back next year. There is no way to undo what is done and there is no one to blame…certainly not the blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy who is now wearing sadness on his face. The whole crew will help me rebuild this garden. They can all feel the sadness and loss they unknowingly tripped. We will find the secret heart of what was in that garden and build something new. Jennifer will definitely have her input. Even charmed gardens have a way of keep-on-keeping-on.
When I awoke this morning, I did not expect to feel my son William so profoundly today. I did not expect to realize the depth of the charmed energy that exists between those plants and me. I am grateful on both counts. But today I write to the world a remembrance: I have TWO sons – William and Paul – and they both have changed and continue to change my life. I am better for both of them.