It’s Spring Again.
The fifth one.
i know it’s spring because the light changed, the air outside smells like thaw and new beginnings. i can feel it even from this caregiving loop in which i live. i can feel it inside the one-mile radius between my house and my parents’.
every changing of the seasons lands like a postcard from a foreign place, anymore.
i used to love watching things grow, used to love spending time in my backyard, used to love gardening. in the before-times, i tended rosemary and thyme, grew massive lavender. i kept a gigantic bed of sage. in pots and planters, i watched over basil, bay laurel, borage, chamomile (which i insisted on calling “chi-mom-olay” after hearing a kid use this pronunciation), chervil, cilantro, dill, fennel, lemon balm, parsley, oregano, tarragon, thyme. standard culinary stuff that i loved taste testing right from the stems, and that my wife enjoyed using after i dried jarfuls for her kitchen adventures.
there were flowers, too. lots of flowers. and, peppers. but, only hot peppers. the hotter the better. the kinds of peppers that make noses sweat, inside and out. i also grew blueberries and blackberries and raspberries, though they weren’t my favorites to tend. and, to the dismay of many, i was one of “those” gardeners who dared to drop mint directly in the ground.
but… now… five springs later, everything’s different.
five springs ago, i didn’t yet know what was coming. when i was called to help my parents’ during their first real emergency in october 2021, i couldn’t see anything clearly enough to grieve in advance the losses that would come, including the person i was.
anyway… a few days ago, coming to the understanding that this hell is likely to go on for years more, i threw a fit of resignation. seeing the announcement of spring on my wall-hung paper calendar, i decided it was time to start laying before-times me to rest. i forced a few hours in one afternoon and headed out to my beloved yard. first, i emptied all of my planters and pots, dumped their contents into lawn bags and sent it all the curb. then, i shoveled what remained of my compost heap into lawn bags. years of fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, oven-baked egg shells, crushed autumn leaves, dark and alive and useful, and i sent it all to the curb. then, i called an arborist and scheduled an estimate. i told him that i wanted his crew to cut back all of our shrubs and trees, hard. i didn’t want him to shape anything. i didn’t ask him to encourage new growth. i wanted him to reduce everything. i wanted less to tend, less to watch decline, and less evidence of more seasons passing without my participation.
then, i gave away my containers. i couldn’t rehome all of them, but half of them are gone, and the rest will go when i can find more time and other willing recipients. the expensive terra cotta ones i collected over the years, chosen for their decorations and shapes, massive sizes and weights, and the sound they made when i tapped them, gone. i found homes for the best ones and the biggest ones. it was easy, because… other gardeners know the value of good pots and planters.
i gave them away because… seeing them unused felt like a particular kind of masochistic cruelty. every time i walked past my untended yard, my dying plants, my sickly beds… all of my failures… i felt miserable. every year that’s passed in which i’ve not been able to tend my projects left me feeling sad. and, my sadness felt like evidence that i’m no longer the person who knew what to do with an afternoon and a carload of new starts or handfuls of fresh seeds in spring. seeing all of my things unused… in a life that has no afternoons anymore, no new springs… was just… painful.
i’m tired of watching my plants die because i can’t tend them. my grief… has run out of patience.
maybe i did this because i truly believe there will be no end to my eldercare sentence, and holding hope is too heavy to handle anymore. so, for the first spring in five springs… i won’t go to the nursery to buy new starts. i won’t plan or plant. i won’t wish. i won’t let myself waste more dreams. every year past, i bought or grew new baby plants only to watch them all wither and die from lack of attention… because of caregiving. i had such good intentions, but… you know how the road to hell is paved.
maybe i’m angry and i’m dressing my anger as pragmatism? maybe i’m dressing loss as decisions?
five springs now… and maybe… i’m finally rising to meet the person i’ve become… or the person i am. five springs now… and maybe… i’m finally accepting that this “temporary” caregiving experience is really, actually permanent.
a lot of people have shared… “all things end” in some way or other, maybe trying to be helpful or to encourage me not to give in to pessimism. but all i do anymore… is caregive death… and i can’t go one more year watching hopeful shoots fail or beautiful plants die.
i’m tired… and…
i tend nothing that grows. i tend… no thing that grows.
update: just as i was finishing this journal entry, i received a text from someone i used to know. “i didn’t tell you, but… sadly h___ died. in two weeks it’ll be a year. it happened at the beginning of april. you’ve been so busy and i was a mess cleaning up everything by myself and grieving. he was suffering terribly. parkinsons got so bad at the end. the dementia was so terrible. the whole thing was a nightmare. i felt like i was living in hell. the end happened on a sunday. now every sunday i spend drinking coffee and crying in the same seat at the same coffee shop i went to after the coroner came to take him away. i have to move out of my house and that’ll be best. i can’t stay here where everything happened. i heard you are still caregiving. you’ve been at it longer than me. with h___ it was only three years. i think it will be five for you soon. i am so sorry. i would offer to help but i just can’t bring myself to be anywhere near parkinson’s ever again. when it’s over for you, send me a message. i can’t help with the now, but i can be there for you after.”
and, i’m f*cking shattered… because… once more… i’m reading a “my watch is ended” message… and wishing it were me sending out that text.
wednesday, thursday, and today our aide called out. muslim holiday and a personal day. and, i’m reminded, as i pick up all of her hours… that i’ve been here for 1,605 days without a weekend off, without a holiday off, without a vacation day, without a sick day, without a personal day, without a break. and, i’m reminded that my mother claimed to believe this would bring us closer… as i wish she would just f*cking die already. both of them. or me… just so this will end. just so this will end.