Death Requires Some Cleanup

I got up quite early yesterday morning to take advantage of the cool damp air and to do some deadheading in the garden. The daffodils and jonquils and Virginia bluebells are long gone. They served their purpose, giving us a wakeup call that spring was coming. And now the peonies, those shaggy beauty queens, have passed the height of bloom and their flowers are becoming sad brown tresses, like unwashed hair. And so I went out to cut off the dead flower heads. With peonies, the petals fall off into a shower of little rags. Perhaps I will rake them up, but not today.

Flowers have their lifespan, and the lifespans are incredibly varied. My hydrangeas are starting to create blossoms, and those blossoms will last quite a while. Underneath them, sturdy purple oxalis have sprung up again. I love their color. They’re supposed to be more of a shade plant, but some have propagated to a little patch in the bright sunlight alongside the driveway. Oxalis, too, have little flowers in springtime. Though the flowers will die, the beautiful purple leaves remain.

All of this aggressive cleaning up of the garden beds will cause me aches and pains in the days to come, but for now, I’m glad I got some of it done. Death requires some cleanup.

Now that’s a cheerful thought, eh? It’s true, though. Whether it’s cutting off spent blossoms, or attending to our human ends, there is work to do.

Had I been a more careful gardener, I would have started yanking the sneaky invasive vines earlier. Now I have to risk the misery of rotator cuff damage pulling and yanking and cutting the execrable things. But this task, like so many other tasks related to life and death in the garden, was one I avoided.

We tend to avoid the topic of things related to human death as well. “Morbid!” we think. But perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can offer those who will remain when we go to be with God is to minimize the work they face after we’re gone. When my children were young, we had wills drawn up, with guardians named, and disposition of what assets we had. A few years ago (the youngest is now about to turn 38) we finally got around to rewriting the wills. There were grandchildren now, and a bit more to distribute to them and to charities, like the church. It was the right thing to do.

The other thing we did was to plan out what our memorial service would look like. Doug and I come from different traditions, although he’s come to love Episcopal liturgy. We’ve planned what we’d like for music, for homilists, for where our remains will be after we die. Why? Because the children are not as adept at making such choices, and expecting them to figure it all out when they are grieving is not a kind thing to do to them.

Here at St. John’s, we have a planning document that I would encourage you to fill out. Anthony and I can walk you through it – in fact, we may do an Adult Forum about this – and we can keep it on file. In prior churches I served, some of those documents sat in a file for a couple of decades until they were needed. Then they were pulled out to use as a reference when a parishioner passed. I remember one fellow who revised his on a regular basis every few years, as my mother did in the last year of her life, particularly changing the hymns she wanted.

It seems like such a small detail, and yet it makes so much sense. If you love those who will survive you, you make your passing less difficult to manage by doing this in addition to having a will.

I deadhead the garden and pull the old vines because I want the garden to thrive next year, and beyond, long after I leave our house for a smaller abode. Prepare for your own “pruning” in this way, and the peace and love that you provide for your beloveds will thrive even in the season of their grief and beyond.

Be blessed and be a blessing,

Mary+