Planting Daffodils in November

Finally the yard chores are finished. The windows have been washed and the lawn furniture put away. I just planted 27 daffodil bulbs. Experience has taught me to forget any landscape plan that includes tulips, however beautiful. The squirrels have sated themselves on our acorns. I’m certainly not going to feed them tulip bulbs!

Despite my hopes for spring flowers, November is the time to contemplate death and dying. Plants have withered; leaves have turned and fallen, their brittle sound follows wind and footstep; the lovelier birds migrated towards sunnier climes weeks ago. The year is dying with the hours of sunlight.

The Catholic Church acknowledges our need to recall our dead with its celebration of All Saints and All Souls Days on November first and second. My daffodil planting brought to mind my dead daughter. It has been twelve and a half years since her death. I don’t like terms like “passed” or “lost her.” Passed what? We were not careless enough to let loose her hand in a crowd. She died. It’s not healthy to deny the word. But what brought her death to mind today was the small manure turtle thriving in my back yard garden. How she would laugh to think that her last Mother’s Day gift to me was a brick of s---! How ironic.

A week ago we attended a Celtic New Year celebration of Irish books, music and art at the Irish-American Heritage Center in Chicago. One of the authors who spoke was Anna McPartlin, a young Irishwoman with a tragic childhood and a smiling disposition. Ms. McPartlin read a chapter from one of her books. In the question and answer session that followed she discussed her first book, Pack Up The Moon. One of her comments was thought-provoking. The story in the first book deals with coming to terms with death and grieving. The young and charming Ms. McPartlin said that the characters in her book learn to acknowledge and surrender the parts of them that died with their loved ones. The role one had played for the departed needs to be buried with them. The special words and intimate interactions are forever lost, accept in memory. Resolution of the grieving process occurs when the survivor can mourn the loss of a portion of themselves as well as the loss of the loved one.

I’m no longer the mother of a young, intelligent woman with whom I argue psychological theory and philosophy. There are no head and back rubs to give while watching Murder She Wrote. There will be no co-written mystery series with a librarian detective. I no longer need to show interest in antique shops that feature familiar looking furniture.

But I plant daffodils and wait for spring. And I share a laugh with someone long dead whenever I see that turtle.