I have kept watch all day, this eve of the second anniversary of Justin’s death. Yesterday I felt that I could not run fast enough to keep ahead of the tsunami headed my way, today I fled to the rose hedge. The rose hedge I have neglected for two years, faithfully it has provided me with roses at Christmas, enough to wreath Justin’s headstone with vibrant, intense magenta roses despite my absence of care for them. So overgrown, tangled, not enough vigor to throw a fall showing of blooms. The Rose of Sharons have shot new growth every which way also, they are out of shape and have tangled with the roses.
I start at the northwest corner and start snipping. My mind slips back to another gardening moment. Justin was home from school, he may have been preparing for another surgery. He was unable to participate in the gardening, but he loved taking a moment to watch. He had caught me wresting with a stubborn weed. He was laughing, saying he enjoyed how intense my focus was, the expression on my face – the weeds didn’t have a chance. He could brighten your day so quickly. Tears now mix with the dust I have stirred up from pruning fifteen foot long rose canes. I think of Justin’s feet. I doubt that he ever shared with anyone that arthritis had already set in the area of the ankle and foot, an expected result of multiple surgeries and not having a true ankle joint, he was never without pain.
I miss how he would take time to observe what was going on, comment on what we were doing, he had the gift of soul gazing, never intrusive though….but he could sense how you felt, pick up on little nuances. I keep pruning, becoming more sure of my cuts, dealing quite severely with the roses. I call
them my Zephyrs, they are properly named “Zephirine Drouhin”, old fashioned climbers, nearly thornless, easy to get on with – not fussy like a tea rose.
I yank and haul a huge pile of canes and brush to the pile started under the Norway Maple, I catch myself looking at the window, half expecting to see him looking back. I shake my head and start cutting again. I discover that trees have grown in the roses. Some almost two inches thick and over ten feet tall, off I go to the shed to find a saw, any saw will do. Saw in hand I bend the tree down and stand on it and start sawing, satisfaction as the first one is down. The improvement is immediate, the tree was so out of place. A tree is a great good, but planted by squirrels in the wrong place it ceases to be a good. A tree can’t reach its full potential in the middle of a rose bush, neither party benefits. I bend another tree down, grateful for my padded landscaping gloves, and ask myself what trees in my life need chopping down?
I switch from trees to the Rose of Sharons. I reach deep inside them and follow branches that are growing the wrong direction, I cut those completely off. Beautiful, leafy lush branches – but the tall shrub can’t breathe, it needs to feel the breeze through its leaves. How the overgrown garden mirrors life. So much stuff, clutter, no breathing space, no negative space to compliment a single item of beauty. Beauty can change the world. Justin would remind me of that when I would half-way joke about having a poured cement garden. “But look how beautiful it will be when you are done” he would say about the hedge, or the tomatoes, or whatever plant I was threatening concrete at the time.
The sun has drifted in the sky, my stomach tightens. I think back to Justin’s last hours alive. I try to map out his day and drive home in my head. I decide to reshape the Rose of Sharons completely and reach for the saw, keeping my entire body engaged focuses that adrenaline rush, channels that anxiety into larger and larger stacks of brush. Twilight falls and I keep trying to do one more bush, the body says no more.
I wish I could push away the night, turn back time, walk the rose hedge one more time with him. I will keep watch through the night, each hour may be the hour that he died….so I will keep watch.
