Metaphysical Mulch

You walk out the door and I plot the outlines of your absence in the garden of my grief.
Next to his. And next to the boy I couldn’t raise further in closer proximity. My unborn children, both of them, eight and six. Next to the dying dream of motherhood. Next to the shadow of suffering my parents endured as children which they were never able to process. Under the solitary tree of immeasurable love. The whole of our suffering world is in this garden.

It hurts now but it will pass, you say. I shake my head. I know better. It passes after attempted love, sure. But not when two hearts are truly in it. Mine reluctantly opening again after years of sensible self protection. You were sitting under the stars in a camping chair playing harmonica quietly so as to not disturb the neighbors. The tenderness of your breath becoming melody through the valves. Their licence plate reading -444-. The moon rising behind you. I couldn’t stop you from entering. A burst of tears flooding from my eyes. You broke the barrier. I surrendered my guards. Love doesn’t pass. Love changes us. Love wants to live in the garden of Life. All the love that has nowhere to go lands in the garden of grief. Forever. These gardens are adjacent. Their roots all part of the same ecosystem.

You can do all the therapy in the world, all the spiritual seeking and reaching for enlightenment, all the ayahuasca, try every possible addiction to help you numb the pain, no matter, the garden grows. And the best thing any therapy can ever offer is clean access to the garden of grief. To enable a coming and going without obstacle or hesitation. Open the gate. Tend the graves. Clear the thistles and brambles. Burry the bones. Offer libations to the spirits and ghosts. Honor what could have been. What should have been. What came crumbling under the weight of incapacity. What was taken by the hands of fate. Too soon. What fear took hostage and never returned.

There’s a bench in the garden underneath the solitary tree of immeasurable love. I sit there regularly to commune with the absences that ache. I will meet you there.