Why do I Continue to Garden?

Why Do I Continue to Garden?
After losing my son David, I almost died from the pain ad sorrow. One way that I dealt with the loss was to create gardens which kept me sane. There is a healing aspect to gardening. I surround myself with beauty which dissipates some of the pain. Try it. It works.

See Beauty in Life

God created a world full of wonder and glory. He created it for us to enjoy. I was always attracted to the beauty of nature even as a child. I grow up in a very poor home and did not have toys to distract me and therefore I played outside most of the time. There was a meadow by our house and I enjoyed the wild flowers as they bloomed, especially the white daisies and the poppies. I learned to distinguish edible plants from those that were not edible.

When I lost my son David, I wanted to die. I could not tolerate the pain. I felt that I could not go on. I would only sit and do nothing. I would wake up crying and go to bed crying and I cried many times in between. I would scream. I would wail. I would throw fits of despair. I would get in the car and drive to nowhere yelling and screaming. I would follow cars when the drivers appeared to look like David, chasing them in order to get one more glimpse of him. I kept myself so busy in order to avoid the pain and sorrow. Sorrow came back at great frequency and I had to figure out how to survive. Sometimes when I could no longer tolerate the pain I would sprint out of the house and go for a walk. Walking seemed to help quite a bit. I would walk until I got exhausted and then I would sit and sit doing nothing. Then one day I decided to create a garden for David and named it “David’s garden”. Now I have many gardens and many meadows and they are all David’s gardens. As I gardened I became more in tune with nature. Its wonder and beauty made me alive and distracted me from the pain, worries and problems that occupied me. I was able to face these problems because I saw beauty in everything and my son is becoming more beautiful to me with the passage of time.

My advice to you is to see beauty in life. Teach your children to be responsive to the beauty of nature and the wonder of every aspect of life. I believe that this will tend to make them more enthusiastic and to live their lives with full zest and zeal. They need to learn that they live in a beautiful world. They need to learn to see the beauty in everything and to make the most out of every moment of their lives.

Cape Cod Gardens

The flowers on Cape Cod are outstanding. I plant them as part of David's Garden.

David's Garden

I planted a garden in David's memory. In the spring, summer and fall I tend to his garden. I think that a garden in the name of your child is very therapeutic. It allows you to dig in the dirt and to just get lost in the beauty of nature. I have a stone by David’s garden that reads “The flowers grow by the tears that fall”. Flowers seem to dissipate the gloom that is within my soul and bring a sudden joy through my downcast spirit. They put on a glow of many colors, all dressed in beauty and wonder. The air is all perfume from their scent. People walk by and admire the garden and when they read the stone, I get to talk about David to them. I have made a lot of friends this way. I even share my plants with them. These are some of the flowers in his garden.