Spring Grief

 

2026 - Twilight Dogwoods

Salutations Friend, 

It's been a month. I spent a week of March lying in bed sick and feverish, and then the rest of it running around in a fresh flurry of activity. I went to Anderson SC to visit a friend (Abby), and then to Atlanta a few times (I got last-minute tickets to see Madison Cunningham). For work, I've been washing and folding sheets at the retreat center, and then recently I took up my old mantle of part-time yard maintenance for my grandmother's lifelong friend, Doris. I don't know if I can really call it work, since I enjoy gardening so much. 

Yesterday, I was bent over in a bed pulling out little blades of grass that were sprouting prolifically out of the mulch. It's amazing just how interesting the world can be when you're that close to it. Somewhere above me, there was a mockingbird calling out car sounds it picked up around the neighborhood, and below, where my fingers were working methodically in the dirt, I watched an ant wandering through a maze of giant wood chips, its antennae sweeping and bobbing around, sensing the world in a way I'll never be able to comprehend. A few moments later, I watched a slick worm surface from the shallow earth. It moved slowly, unconcerned by my presence or observation. The worm doesn't care if I think it's ugly or cute; it simply is. 

Sometimes I come across the homes of lone bees, either a small hole burrowed beneath a clump of daffodils, or some tubing sticking out of stonework. In those moments, we exist together beautifully.

When I'm gardening, the process in the beginning can often be violent: cutting through roots, unearthing buried rot, rocks, worms, tangled growth. I observe closely as I work, the little life scurrying below me, my big body shrinks down to their size. Then I plant, I break up clods of dirt and gently tuck it around the greenery. I fertilize the plant, water it diligently, and pick away weeds that threaten to steal the sunlight. Growing takes time; the fruits of my labor are not often immediately evident. But, oh, how human I feel when my hands are stained with dirt. 

I've been thinking a lot recently (duh). For my Modern Irish Literature class, we've been reading Normal People by Sally Rooney. I've been reading my copy from 2022, taking note of the quotes I underlined, thinking about who I was in that moment of time. 

I remember buying the book, frantically driving to my local Barnes and Noble, shaking with fury, and horribly dissociated, wondering if I should be driving at all. I made a fitting selection of Normal People, a collection of Sylvia Plath's work, and Devotions by Mary Oliver.

It was early October, and while the world died around me, I was stuck in violent stasis. The guest room was empty. My grandmother, Oma, had just died after a long battle with dementia, both body and mind wasting away in bed, day after day, for eight months. I watched, walking past the sick room on my way to the kitchen, until she starved to death, unable to eat. 

It was my gap year. All the friends I had left (a handful) had left for college. Then I started college, and Oma died in September, and on the last day of September, I went out dancing and drinking for the first time. What was there left to do? I just wanted to forget. 

I wondered for a long time if he meant to hurt me, if he was malicious or just stupid. I tried to keep him in front of me and at a distance. I told him I was very drunk, which I was, a fact he laughed away. When he had me crushed against him, I kept my head slumped on his shoulder, not wanting to make eye contact, not wanting to share breathing space. Mostly, I didn't know what was happening. 

It was nice that my grandmother had just died, because then I didn't have to explain to my parents why I was so off. I remember Googling what counts as sexual assault, trying to make sense of my experience through laws and legality, something concrete I could point to and say, "There! That's what happened to me!" Why did I feel so bad? It could have been worse. He didn't try to rape me. He didn't even care to read the discomfort on my face. He didn't think about me at all; I wasn't a person to him, just a worm drying out on the sidewalk.

Months later, while working at the plant nursery, I was talking to one of my coworkers about being nervous for my 21st birthday. I had weird feelings around alcohol, and I told him (my coworker) about that one indecipherable experience I had in September, why I didn't want to feel that vulnerable again. I remember the shock and horror on his face and the word he used, sexual assault. It felt so awful hearing someone else use that word. It made my feelings real. 

I excused myself and went to take care of the chickens. Sitting on a stack of cinderblocks in the coop, I watched the hens peck away at their food, letting out soft clucks, moving erratically. The space between the atoms of my body felt like it was expanding, turning me translucent, into a haze of a person. A cloud moved somewhere across some horizon. Spiders spun their webs above my head, and slowly, like when waking from a nightmare, my consciousness trickled back into a staticky body. I sat there until I coalesced into a form again and then went on with my day. 

And so I remember this all, as I flip through the pages of Normal People, reading my past grief and loneliness in someone else's words. I remember the gap year I spent spreading mulch in Doris's yard, the stories she'd tell me about Oma, sharing with me precious memories, antidotes against the grief I'd eventually feel. We still talk about her sometimes, when the sun is setting and I'm watering the ferns on the front porch. I think about her when I'm digging up irises. 

Azaleas outside of class

On April 1st, I got an email saying I was accepted into Oxford (no, it was not an April Fool's joke), meaning I'll spend the upcoming fall there, finishing up my degree before coming home and graduating. I wonder if, in the future, when I think of September, I'll remember getting on a plane to England. If I'll remember seminars, cathedrals, and museums rather than sick rooms, funerals, and sweaty hands? If it'll be like reading a book for the second time and realizing you're no longer the same person?

There's a lot more I could write about grief, love, and gardening, and I probably will in the future, but this letter has run on long enough. I'll leave you with a song. 

Broken Harvest - Madison Cunningham 

With much love,

Mary W.