Country Mouse Monday: endings, beginnings, sweetness

One week ago today, my youngest sister passed away after years of cancer and illness. She was a brilliant person who changed dramatically in the final years of her life, away from the person we knew into some other creature with a different family and a desire not to know us.

To say the last four years have been painful is an understatement.

And so her death, finally, was a relief in many ways -- relief that she no longer suffers, relief that her 6-year-old daughter no longer witnesses her wasting away, relief that my family at last grieves in earnest instead of wracking our brains for how to fix the broken.

For me, the Country Mouse, naturally on that day a week ago, I found solace in the dirt.

As I stumbled through the garden quickly that morning before heading to my parents' side, behold: the little potimarron seeds planted on April 13th were already breaking soil, pushing, pushing their way into the light.

Yes, decay and death, and also new life and green shoots and vigor.

The garden reminds me always that all of this co-exists, the start and the end and everything in between, maybe at different rates at some points, but always everything all at once.  Hands in the soil and eyes on the bees floating flower to flower, pain recedes, replaced by a deep peace.  Yes, this is how things are.

The nectar is always present if we only seek it.

So I make like a bee and feed myself on the sweetness, flower to flower, friend to friend, celebrating the green starts and the dismal endings, all at the same time, all in the same breath, drinking deeply.

XX