The Great Memorial Garden Pivot of 2021
You say butterflies, I say nah
If one more person suggests I create a butterfly garden to honor my son, I’m going to scream.
I appreciate the thought, but I don’t know anything about butterflies, gardens, butterfly gardens, or gardening butterflies. Trying something like this would frustrate me, disappoint the plants, and scare the butterflies.
I’m in awe of people with the skills and imagination required to create memorial gardens, art, sculpture, jewelry, and cool stuff like that. I have enough self-awareness to know that anything I tried to make would look like it was designed by a hamster with a caffeine habit.
But as the second anniversary of Christopher’s death crept up on me, I felt it was really important to come up with some tangible, permanent way to honor my son’s life. I somehow got it in my head that this was something all Good Parents did and the fact that I hadn’t thought of anything after all this time made me feel terrible. Forget the fact that I was a little busy around the time of the first anniversary of his death to create something, I still felt like I’d slighted him somehow.
Every time I tried to think of an idea, nothing seemed quite right so I turned to the internet but drew a blank there too. I asked other people for ideas and, I kid you not, almost everyone recommended a butterfly garden. My overly-picky parameters and total lack of talent in any of the skills needed to make a spot-on memorial of some sort threatened to keep my plans on the back burner for another year.
I was sitting in my backyard one day when my gaze landed on a plant growing underneath our security light disguised as a fancy lamppost. My mother-in-law gifted the plant to us at a gathering in our home in Christopher's honor after his out-of-state funeral. A couple of days later, I asked Michael to plant it somewhere I could see it from any window that overlooked the yard, and it’s been there ever since.
That damn thing stressed me out for a good six months before I had any confidence my under- or over-attentiveness to its needs would wreck it. I wasn’t sure whether to water it, fertilize it, prune it, or just let it be. So I let it be. Honestly, those first six months I could barely care for myself, much less a plant, so I didn’t really have a choice.
Over the next two years, I watched that little bundle of stems and leaves grow into a lush, strong, beautiful plant that survived tropical storms, ridiculous heat, blazing sunlight, random wildlife, and the weird March cold snaps we have that come out of nowhere. It didn’t just stayed alive. It thrived.
Right now, you’re probably expecting me to draw some parallel between my grief and the resilience of the plant. Nope. That plant has done way better than I ever have in the last two years. It looks ready for the cover of Home and Garden and I look ready for the cover of Mad Magazine.
Anyway, as I sat looking at the plant, my mind went back to the warm spring day a few years ago when my kids worked together to dig a stubborn bougainvillea out of the ground for us. It took them most of the day, but they had a ball digging and pulling and hacking away at it.
I remember them dragging its carcass to the curb for pickup and taking selfies like they’d brought down a water buffalo. And the fun we had sitting around the fire pit that night while they taught me how to use Snapchat.
I started thinking about the salsa garden Christopher started for me soon after, then started again when I let it languish (I really am terrible with greenery). In fact, we’d talked about that garden a few days before he died and about the new ones he wanted to put in once spring sprung.
That’s when how to honor the anniversary of Christopher’s death suddenly came to me.
Were he part of the decision, my son would have appreciated a physical memorial of some sort, sure. But what he would have loved was a memorial with a purpose. A memorial that made someone’s, or something’s, life just a tiny bit better. From veterinarian to emergency medicine, every career path that interested my son as he grew up had an element of compassion to it. His memorial must as well.
I spent his (my? our?) second anniversary putting things around Christopher’s plant in the backyard that I believe he would have chosen himself. I added a small birdbath for the songbirds that come to our yard by the dozens every day (he loved wildlife), a suet feeder to keep the crows busy so they don’t hassle the starlings (he loved harmony), and a fresh eco-friendly bulb in the security light that helps keep us safe (he loved us). And, finally, I added something small that only I know is there – something only he would understand. It’s perfect.
As an added bonus, its placement in the yard gives our cats an unfettered and maddening view of the action they can see but not attack – a little touch that would have amused Christopher to no end.
The array looks fairly ordinary, like something you’d find in any yard in the country, and that’s fine with me. It’s a lot less maintenance than a butterfly garden, which means a lot less stress for me since I’m not as likely to kill any foliage with my giant black thumb.
I guess I could wax on about how the area is a visual representation of this or its elements are a metaphor for that, but none of that matters. Looking at it brings me comfort, which Christopher would have appreciated.
There’s no memorial in the world, nothing anyone can build or even dream up, that makes up for the child I lost. Wait, let me amend that. There’s nothing in the world, period, that makes up for it. But if looking at a birdbath and a couple of suet feeders can take the edge off the pain for even a minute, I’ll take whatever I can get.
News & Notes
Learning to Honor My Grief When the World Has Become Desensitized to Loss
“In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through of emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the aftermath of an overwhelming situation.”
If this quote was a person, I’d marry it.
Changing the Way We Mourn with Animal Crossing: New Horizons
“The ability to connect with these anthropomorphic animals is no doubt one of the main calling cards of this game. But it’s also a place where you can weave your own personal tastes and designs into your gaming experience.”
Christopher and I played video games together and he would have loved this one. I can’t bring myself to create anything quite so memorial-specific yet, but I do have an area of my island dedicated to my kids that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me. If you play AC:NH and want to connect, my contact info is at the bottom of this page.
This website “is a tribute to mourning and sentimental jewelry in history. Written by scholar, collector and historian, Hayden Peters.”
The momentos cataloged on this site are segmented into categories like brooches, bracelets, art, and miniatures. Each section is more fascinating than the last.
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Until next week,
Be well.
Lisa