THE BEN GARDEN

FIVE YEARS OF THE BEN GARDEN VIDEO

The crabapple tree was raining fruit on our vehicles.  It had to go.  We had two trees in the yard and the decision was made to terminate the one closest to the driveway.  I asked my nephew Ben to come and help with the demo process.  

Ben brought his girlfriend and his chainsaw in the summer of 2014 and we all worked to process the tree.  I remember him asking me how much of a stump he was to leave.  I told him to leave it around four feet.  My thought was... 'I'll think of something to do with it.'  

That stump was a bird feeder for a couple of years after it was cut. 

In the summer of 2017 it found a different purpose.  I needed a place to honour Ben who had died in January in a tragic vehicle accident.  Ben wasn't a gardener or a flower child of any kind.  The garden was my expression, my need, my space to dwell.  I needed to wrap that stump that Ben had given me with an array of beauty and fragrance.  So I created the Ben Garden.  

The second year, I was chopping down another tree in my yard and used part of that cut to fashion an identifier for him in the garden.  

Every year, the floral array changes.  The video at the beginning of the post shows the various selection of blooms that made their way into the garden.  I still used the post as a bird feeder the first year and I had some volunteer sunflowers show up adding some great sunshine to the collection.  

It took a few years before there was an official resting place, and so this garden became that place for me to go and dwell.  

NOT A GRAVE TO GRIEVE

(the poem I wrote about the Ben Garden) 

 “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” — Pierre Auguste Renoir

THE BOY, THE BIKE AND THE BOOK

Clinton Wade Giesbrecht was just a toddler when he was found by his mom, face down floating in the dugout.  He was a happy and high energy child.  His mom had only taken her eyes off of him for a brief moment.  One moment...she saw her boy playing contented in the sandbox, and the next he was in the water.  

I was around twelve at the time of Clinton’s death.  I sat in the back of the church during the funeral and cried.  I felt grief at the loss of this little boy.  He had just been over to our farm with his mom a week before and two of us were playing together.  His death was an event I couldn’t wrap my head around. 

(The writeup taken from the photo stories for my book "Still Broken")

* * * 

When I was choosing pictures for my "Still Broken" book, the chapter" Still Grief" could have had a plethora of options for an gravestone but this little boy had one major significance in my life that made it the choice for the chapter photo.  Clinton's death was the first tragic death that happened that mattered to me. 

Up until my twelfth birthday, I hadn't known insensible pain like this.  My grandmother died when I was seven from cancer, but grandmothers are old and they die.  (My grandmother died at the age of 64... now I would say that's not old) 

I remember Clinton's funeral.  I was sitting in the back watching the family enter down the aisle of Flatrock Mennonite Church.  Clinton's two brother's bounced down the aisle.  For some reason I remember the bouncing.  It seemed to not fit with the next scene that caught my eye.  Clinton's parents were carried in on shoulders of friends and family.  They couldn't walk down the aisle they were so torn with grief and sorrow.  Clinton's dad was a big man, a farmer, and I remember watching him and his tears, his pain soaked into my soul.  I had never seen a man cry like that before.  

Decades later, I found myself at that Flatrock Mennonite church  cemetery where Clinton was buried.  I took the picture of his head stone and spent a moment there reliving the story.  I still have the vivid memory of our last visit together.  There was a little yellow toddler's bike that my sister and I had since we were little.  Clinton was playing with it.  He liked it so much, Mom said I could give it to him to take home.  That visit happened the week before his death.  I remember the first visit we had to Clinton's farm after the funeral.  I saw that yellow bike.  Another moment of grief washed over me.  

I wrote no poems for Clinton.  I wasn't a poet when that loss happened.  But his place in the grief story of my life mattered, so the picture of his gravestone opened up the grief chapter of my book.  It was a coming around to a healing for me.  I still couldn't make any sense of it, but maybe it's not a story that needs any sense.  It just needed telling.  

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love." — Washington Irving

REMEMBERING BOB AT BRAZEAU

 I was surrounded by my favourite wildflowers, a ditch filled with  Indian Paintbrush. I  had already picked a good bouquet when the email came through.  My dad's cousin Bob had passed away.  Bob was a special cousin to me.  He was a dairy farmer and a musician.  I remember connecting with him on many an occasion.  Our dairy farming connection was an extra special bond.    

My hubby and I were just heading out for a few days in Alberta the wilderness.  My heart felt heavy and I didn't want to burden him with the sadness of the moment.  So I stayed in the ditch and picked flowers and thought of Bob.  I dedicated the bouquet to him and kept the news of his passing to myself.  

We moved a little farther down the road  to the next stop in our journey, Brazeau Dam.  I got a chance to go walking on the beach and I found myself wanting to do something more to commemorate Bob and his memory.  I found a piece of driftwood and carved his name in it.  Then I threw driftwood out into the reservoir and let the waves of the water dance with it.  I felt like my time in nature would have met with Bob's approval.  

I have a big family and every once in a while I get a notification via email that someone has died.  I don't always have the opportunity to do something special, but that day I did.  I ended up sending the pictures of the flowers to Bob's family and his wife emailed me back.  

Hi Ruby, Thanks for the beautiful flowers and pictures!

Thanks for thinking of us.

Marion and family.

Maybe sometimes that is all it takes.  Sympathy cards are nice, but when you are surrounded by wildflowers and they are there to soak up the sadness of the moment, then let that be the card.  Let that moment  be the one you pass along to those who are hurting.  

“Life seems sometimes like nothing more than a series of losses, from beginning to end. That's the given. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what's left, that's the part you have to make up as you go.” ― Katharine Weber

HELEN'S RULES

 "Mom... we need to get together and have a game of Skip-bo and play by Helen's rules."  

* * * 

I enjoy playing card games with my Mom.  One of those fun games we play is Skip-Bo.  Most people that play card games understand that most games come with rules and some have rules cast upon them.  This is one such game.  Mom would play Skip-Bo with two special ladies, Shannon and Helen and each had a different way of playing the game.  So when Mom and I got together to play, the question was... "Who's rules are we playing by?"  I would default to Shannon's rules because it was a far less confusing way to play the game.

 There is a maximum of four piles at a time that we could play on.  With Shannon's rules, all four piles started with the Aces and we worked up to the Twelves.  It was far less taxing on the brain.  But then came Helen's rules.  I guess Helen needed more of a challenge so two of the piles were  built up from Ace to Twelve and the other two piles were built down from Twelve to Ace.  When we play that way, we are constantly checking the piles to see which direction they are going.  It really messes with the mind, so that is why I would rather play with Shannon's rules.  

Helen passed away this June.  The tears didn't flow hard because Helen had a hard life, and it was understood that death was freedom for her.  I still wanted to do something to honour her.  She was a very special lady in my family so I got the idea of getting together and playing a game in honour of Helen.  

I texted my sister and she came by to join in the memorial gave of Skip-Bo by Helen's rules.  We laughed more than we cried, but we remembered Helen and that was what mattered.  

"What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” — Helen Keller

WHERE THE ROAD KILL RESTS

 

"I may tell myself at the time that I do this for my husband, but really... I do it for me."  

These are words I told my friend of forty years when I shared the following story with her.  

* * * 

Let's back up to yesterday.  My husband and I were driving home from a short road trip, and as we were turning off the highway to our street, my husband noticed first what I noticed right after him.  A rabbit had met its end on the highway right in front of our house.  This was a fresh kill.  It rattled us both.  

We have a family of critters that spend time in our yard. We have birds, squirrels and a couple of bunnies.  They come and they go, but we have gotten attached their presence.  Yesterday morning, the first thought that came into my head, and probably "Mr Bunny!"  

There was no way of knowing what rabbit had been run over.  But it didn't matter at the time.  I told my husband I would take care of it.  Because I took care of the last one. 

It was last year when we "lost" another member of our furry community.  A squirrel was hit on the street across from our driveway.  I needed to do something as we both thought it was Squishy, our friendly squirrel who lived in our tree and had learned to eat peanuts from our hand.  My husband and I  had gotten very attached to Squishy.  

I had disposed of a bird that died in my yard once and didn't feel good for a week after, because I didn't give it a dignified farewell.  So this time, I wanted to bury "Squishy".  We have a Saskatoon patch in our yard that has become quite the bush.  There is a little path into the centre of the patch.  I took the squirrel and buried him in the middle of my Saskatoons.  I cut down a limb from our maple tree and carved "Squishy" in the wood.  I stuck the marker in the ground where I buried the squirrel.  

It was a while later when "Squishy" reemerged in our yard, and my husband and I both concluded that our friend was not the same squirrel that was buried in my berry patch.  But I am still glad I gave the little guy a memorable resting place.   

So yesterday, it didn't take me long to decide that I needed to find another place to bury the bunny.  Something in me needed to put some extra effort into this burial.  My lilacs were just starting to lose their purple beauty and some of my peonies were on the tail end of their blooming, so I gathered some blossoms into a bucket.  I emptied half of the pail into the hole I had dug.  Then the rabbit went in, and I topped up the hole with the remaining flowers, before putting the dirt back on top.  I went back to my peony patch and harvested some more blossoms and laid them on top of the grave.  

I found a branch in the Saskatoon patch that was the perfect size for a marker, and I carved the word "HASE" into it.  Hase is the German word for Rabbit. Another nickname we had for our bunny was Herr Hase.. (Mr Bunny).   Across the highway is some bush land that has Alberta wild roses in fresh bloom.  I harvested a sprig of one of the rose bushes and stuck it in the grave.   

I didn't even make it back in the house, when two rabbits showed up on our neighbour's yard and one of them ventured across the street into our front yard, passing by the Saskatoon patch.  I called to my husband through the window that we had company.  The sight of two bunnies gave us both a calming feeling, that maybe our bunnies that we had become so fond of were still alive.  I imagined that two bunnies had come to pay their respects to their friend or family member. 

I don't know all the details.  There are so many rabbits in our town and we don't have name tags affixed to them.  But it really didn't matter to us which rabbit or which squirrel died.  They were a reminder how fragile life is for us and for the critters that give us joy.  The tears shed for these little bundles of fur were not wasted even if they weren't the critters that frequented our yard.  

My little burial ceremonies also helped me process a painful experience of cleaning the road of their remains.  I am not that tough inside, but the other option is not doing something and that is worse.  So I have created a little resting place for the road kill.  They may have met an untimely end because they were in the wrong place at the right time, but I want them to still matter.  They were life, they were breath, they were part of our world and now... they are a part of the Flow.  

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."  —  A. A. Milne