Rooted Grief

Friday, 4:26 pm

I have to get home.

Ever since I got the call from Sarah my right foot has been sliding downward, pushing a little harder on the accelerator.  That's a daring thing to do out on Highway 59 where there is a law enforcement vehicle in every dead town, waiting for someone like me, someone in a hurry, to come by doing 63 in a 45.

Sarah called me while I was in Milledgeville at a business meeting. I looked back at our call history and saw the last time we talked was 4 months ago. Has it been that long? Sarah had called to say she was coming home for the weekend, and I'm glad. We need the time together. 

But I’m worried about the ivy.

It seems silly, I know. Last fall, before Maya was bedbound, all she wanted to do was work in the garden. She planted roses in the front yard, hydrangeas along the pathway leading to the pool, and dozens of other plants and flowers. They were all perennials, meaning, she knew they would outlive her. I was out there in the garden too, digging holes mainly. I went to Home Depot probably a hundred times that fall.

I became something of a gardener myself after she went on hospice care. When the nurses needed space I would work on the irrigation system or mulch or whatever I could do to keep my hands busy. 

The week before she passed she had one good day. One beautiful, perfect day. She asked to go out and see how the garden was doing so I took her out in the wheelchair.

I showed her the roses, the Japanese maple I had trimmed. The wheelchair slid in the muddy soil from the rains, but we weren’t worried about the mess it would make when we took it back inside. When we passed the small trellis full of English ivy, she looked at me, brimming with excitement.

"Oh honey, look! The ivy is doing so well. Take a cutting of it for me and put it in a glass of water. We can plant it somewhere else later." She said with shining eyes. I did, of course.

One month later, the cold had plucked every leaf from the new plants leaving only brown skeletons. Maya had faded too, she didn't say much to me at the end. It took all of her energy to take a small sip of water.

The small sprig of English ivy sat on the kitchen table, slowly forming roots and staying as green as ever throughout those cold days.

It continued to thrive as I planned the funeral, papers scattered all over the table around it. Its roots spread over the bottom of the jar as I spent so many lonely evenings eating a meal I made for one.

The ivy should have been planted long ago. Certainly by the end of the next spring. Definitely by the end of the summer. But I couldn't bring myself to change anything about the pint-sized Mason jar on the table, except maybe to add a little water every once in a while. When I looked at the little sprig I could see us in the garden again. Me pushing the wheelchair through the soil and the mulch, Maya pointing and smiling. 

The jar had begun to get a little green around the bottom as the roots continued to grow out and encircle the jar, searching for earth. 

Sarah has always been a cleaning freak, and I know she will notice the pile of clothes in the hallway next to the bathroom, the piles of junk mail on the table, and the algae growing at the bottom of the jar.

I can't let her throw it out. But for some odd reason, I know that I can't explain it to her if I call. I have to get home.

Friday, 5:05 pm

Driving on such a straight and continuous stretch of road can be mind-numbing. The highway climbs and falls for miles ahead but it rarely turns to the right or to the left. Sitting here, I am almost mesmerized by it, lost in my own thoughts about happier times.

I can see a small white chapel sitting quite close to the road. Maya and I got married in a little chapel like this over 25 years ago. It was an incredibly hot summer day and all the ladies were fanning themselves with their wedding programs, waiting for the bride to arrive. My mother was crying. 2 hours later in a shower of birdseed we were heading out to the car.

I would have held her tighter then if I had known how short our time would be. I would have held her tighter every day after that too. 

The traffic is starting to get worse again as I drift into a larger town. A young man and his wife pull up beside me at one of the 5 or so redlights that stand in front of each other. She has dirty blonde hair and is staring out the window at everything, the cars, the buildings, me. Anything but the man in the passenger seat. With just a glance I can tell tensions are high. I know a little bit about that too.

Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but there were some moments that it really felt like it was.  

Friday, 6:14 pm

The traffic is getting a little better, the long lines of cars have thinned and I haven't seen any flashes of brake lights recently. I keep thinking about the ivy, sitting on the kitchen table. If Sarah throws it out I can always fish it out of the trash, or the bushes in the side yard, or wherever and put it back. But I’m afraid that it won't be the same. That somehow touching it and cleaning the glass will affect the memories that it holds. 

The mind is a funny thing. Who knows? Maybe I'll get back home before Sarah does.

Friday, 6:45 pm

The trees on Highway 59 are in an uproar of color. When the wind blows the leaves come spinning down, glancing off of my windshield before being lost from view in the road behind me.

I drove past a park a couple of miles back. There were several families with kids, dads and moms pushing them on the swings, holding them up as they went across the monkey bars. I remember when Sarah was around their age. Her bright eyes and messy brown hair always made everyone love her.

I don't know what went wrong with us, or why we stopped talking. I'll admit, I didn't do a great job of keeping our little family together in the first few months after the funeral. I made it clear that I didn't want to have Christmas at the house, but I was a little hurt when Sarah didn't come home anyway. Her friends had offered for her to come celebrate Christmas with them, and I guess that was alright.

But the silence that first Christmas was surreal. The house was so quiet, I was begging for the refrigerator compressor to click on, for the neighbor's dog to bark, anything to stop the cold silence that was the absence of Maya. The ground was frozen solid but I spent much of the afternoon digging holes for spring planting, piling up mounds of the frozen earth until my yard looked like some sort of tribal burial ground.

The next year I should have decorated for Christmas and asked Sarah to come home. It was another cold day, just me and the ivy plant at the kitchen table while I ate another microwave meal. The roots had grown much larger by that second Christmas, filling the jar completely with its spinning tentacles. The one vine had separated into two that were spilling over the side of the jar. 

Honestly, I don't know why I didn't call Sarah.

Friday, 8:26 pm

It was biting cold as I got out of the car. The keys shook in my hand as I walked to the front door.

Sarah's car was in the driveway.

When I opened the door, I saw that the pile of laundry next to the bedroom was gone. 

Sarah came around the corner. She didn't smile but she walked straight to me and we embraced. Looking over her shoulder, I could see that the plant was gone, the table completely clear of all of the mail and papers that were scattered over it two days ago when I left for my trip. The kitchen smelled strange, like Lysol and vinegar and earth all mixed together. The dishwasher swished, breaking the silence as we embraced. 

"I'm glad you came home," I said.

"Me too."

"I see you did a little bit of cleaning up around here," I said, trying to hide the edge in my voice. 

Why do I always do this? I shouldn’t be finding something wrong when I should be happy to see her.

"Why did you say it that way?" She said, looking away slightly. She could tell I was annoyed, and I hated myself for that. How would she know about the ivy?

This had to stop. Maybe, if I got past myself, past my own grief and hurt, I could reach out and take a risk. It wasn’t as hard as it seemed. I looked at the empty spot on the table for a moment, then shook my head.

"Never mind about that. Hey, do you want to go to Starbucks? Tell me about how school has been going over a hot chocolate?"

"Dad…Are you sure? It's late." She was surprised, in a good way. I hadn't seen her face light up like that in a long time.

"Sarah I have missed you so much. I really have. Honestly, I know I haven't made much of an effort recently, but I would be honored if you would go to Starbucks with me."

There. I had said it. Was it that hard to try to connect? All I had to do was string a few honest sentences together. Why hadn’t I done this before?

“That's fine as long as you’re paying," she said, her eyes shining again.

Friday, 10:10 pm

The house was strangely warm when we got back from the coffee shop. After Sarah was settled into her room I went back to the kitchen and sat down at the table, exhausted. Sarah was coming back to her old self again, willing to forgive her father, an old fool who thought that digging holes in the backyard would somehow fix the emptiness in his own heart.

I looked over at the rest of the kitchen. It was spotless. All the dishes were cleared from the sparking countertops. The one exception was the tiny pile of...dirt? Next to the sink.

I pulled the chair back and walked over to the counter. As I got closer to the sink I could see a green leaf peeking over the edge. The ivy sat in a small terra-cotta pot that was filled with wet soil.

Of course. That earthy smell that I had sensed when I came into the kitchen earlier!

I found a saucer for the pot and put the ivy back on the table. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed to look better now that its roots were soaking in nutrients from the soil. 

Some things aren't meant to be kept in a jar forever.

Sunday, 7:24 pm

The sun set about 30 minutes ago. Sarah and I have reconnected this weekend, and I'm sad to see her go. I walked down the driveway to her running car, my sock feet sticking to the slightly damp concrete with each step. 

The window was fogged. She rolled it down, looking at me with smiling eyes.

"Promise you'll come back for Thanksgiving?" I said.

"Yeah, I will," she said, and I knew she meant it.

"Here, I brought this out for you, but you have to promise to take care of it for your mom's sake."

I handed the little pot through the window and Sarah took it carefully, tucking it into the passenger seat alongside her purse.

She smiled.

"I love you, Sarah."

"Love you, Dad."

I stood in the driveway until the hum of her engine faded.