Seeds of Hope

After the fire at our house, we were put up in a hotel room and then small rental house with two teenage boys and three dogs. It became clear very quickly that the “burn house” as we came to refer to it, was going to be gutted and rebuilt, and that would take some time, more time than I wanted to be stuck in a crappy rental house with two teens and three dogs.

There was a little hobby farm for sale just up the hill from the burn house. We could keep the boys in their respective schools, and be nearby to oversee the reconstruction of the burn house. Even better yet, we could be on our own little slice of country, and all the boys were so excited about it. The burn house had been my house with Mr.Klaus through the divorce. The farm would be our place, Joel, Owen, Klaus, and myself. 

We moved onto the farm in mid-February 2020, and then the world shut down in March. We were sequestered even more so on our little farm, and we were so grateful to be here and not in an apartment in New York City! Still the pandemic was hard. The next few months were some of the darkest times in my life. My business shut down, like so many others, which was scary, but then we very quickly reopened to treat toothaches and infections. On one hand, this was wonderful, on the other hand we were so afraid of the unknown, of getting sick or bringing it home with us. The guidelines were changing daily, and we were trying to drink from a fire hose to keep up. The stress was overwhelming.

In May my father was suddenly admitted to the hospital with congestive heart failure, and he had been the primary care-giver for my mother, so I took a few weeks off work to take charge of her care. That same week, my best friend from dental school committed suicide. A darkness settled in. It took a long time to leave that darkness behind.

The day of Laura’s funeral, which we attended via zoom, after many tears, I went outside and planted sunflower seeds. It was May in Minnesota. We were past the last frost. Spring was in the air. For the first time I had a large open sunny field to plant whatever I wanted. My garden, this little farm, it helped save me. Going outside, sun on my face, hands in the dirt, thoughts of the future, of flowers, it was healing. Gardening is inherently hopeful. If the fire sent me into a cocoon, planting those sunflowers was what started to help me break out of it, the genesis of Iron Butterfly. There was a ray of sunlight through the darkness.

I reflected on the following words from CS Lewis that day:

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.… There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. -CS Lewis, A Grief Observed.

This is exactly how I felt. In shock, moving through the world as if underwater. Before heading outside to the garden I jotted down some thoughts:

Laura was the best of us. Her soul glowed.

As Anthony Doer pointed out in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, we call color visible light, and “mathematically, all of light is invisible”. I’m going to believe that although I cannot see Laura anymore, and I cannot see the light inside her, I am going to believe that she is part of the light surrounding me, and nourishing these tiny plants, and continuing to make the world beautiful.

Postscript:

This evening the Northern Lights were making a rare appearance here in Minnesota. It was a clear night, and Ursa Major was large and bright in the sky. The green lights flashed and danced with the big bear. I hadn’t seen them in Minnesota since I was a teenager. They gobsmacked me then, and now. Photographs don’t really do them justice. To see them dance across the sky live is awe inspiring. It’s hard to describe. Imagine heat lightening, but with a clear sky, and full of color, swirling and dancing across the starry sky. Some Native American traditions considered the auroras to be the spirits of their ancestors. Tonight, I felt Laura’s spirit may be among them, once again among the light surrounding us and making the world beautiful.

We are made of stardust after all, and light.