living things

A friend's father is dying.

I learned this just a few days ago and it immediately took me back over a decade to my own father's last days. The coincidence did not escape me: I had my ticket to the flower show that year and then had a call from my mother. My dad was seriously ill. The ticket stayed in my wallet when I drove to their home, but I didn't leave for another week as we all tried to come to grips with what turned out to be a terminal diagnosis.

I spent half of what ultimately became the final month of his life with the two of them, involving hospice and supporting in the only ways I knew. If you've been through this, you understand. My challenge was to be as involved as I could while not trying to make decisions that were not mine to make. The day we took Dad to the hospital for diagnostic tests, I found refuge in the bathroom where I cried in the stall before rejoining my mother who sat and waited.

Throughout those seemingly endless and also swiftly passing days, I also found solace in my journal. It was the place for me to indulge my anguish and pain so that I could keep walking through the entire experience with my folks. It let me have that experience in my own way and still be able to function -- to accept my helplessness in the situation. Ultimately I remember describing that final journey with my dad as exquisitely painful. Again, if you've been there, you know.

Now my friend and her family are going through the same thing. And outside the winter is beginning to lose its grip on the landscape (and our psyches). I expect in years to come that the signs of spring -- wet earth, softer air and the urgency of emerging crocuses -- will forever be associated with this period in my friend's family's lives. It has been so in my own.

And this week I will go to the flower show, immersing myself in what is vital, alive and a celebration of that which goes from seed to flower and fruit, then seeds for the future, and ultimately to die. I'd like to invite my friend, who's an avid gardener, to join me if she would like the respite. It might be too much right for her right now, but I'll try. It was her dad who taught her how to make a garden. What a gift.