Even the Garden

    I fell desperately in love with Paul McCartney when I was fourteen years old.  Of course, this was highly common in 1964, it was all the rage.  But, in suburban Massachusetts in 1995, it was quite out of the ordinary.  I was supposed to be mourning the death of Kurt Cobain.  I was supposed to be dedicating myself to Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains.  But I missed the Grunge Train, and opted for a Yellow Submarine.
    It was his voice.  I remember listening to Rubber Soul over and over again, feeling something profound stir in me when Paul sang.  His voice was so smooth, so flawless, so pure.  And he sang with such creative fervor.  Combined with John Lennon, he wrote the songs that defined my life.  I can remember cruising around in the parking lot of a local grocery store, my mother and sister chiming in, everyone singing “Drive My Car”
*      *      *
    My father remained on the couch or in his bed the entire winter of 1987, as I recall.  He had been stricken with a mystery disease made him hyper-allergic to a gamut of things.  From apples to shrimp, from flour to oranges, his body was marked with painful rashes, and his joints flared with arthritic fire.  He became sensitive to sound, to light.  Shots of pain coursed down his legs and arms, and frequently, he’d cry out in pain as he lay still.
    I was a child.  The house was quiet, all but the buzzing of the television in the living room, as the late winter chill still held its grasp on the landscape.  Drifts of snow snugged next to the house, and yet, there, beneath the storm drains, where enough water and light had crept through, delicate little green shoots poked their way through the snow and dirt.  Crocuses.  In the bleak sunlight, still, some of them opened their lavender petals, and cut their own path through the gloom.
    It was that winter, as well, that I saw my parents fail.  My mother came home late one evening, I recall it was a Monday, and I was supposed to be sleeping.  After endless hours of work at the real estate agency, my mother had to start her second shift.  She was still in her high heels as she stumbled down the hallway, with my father’s arm around her, supporting him.  I had a direct view of the hallway, and I sat up in bed, pulling my downy comforters up under my chin.
    I sat up just in time, to watch my parents both fall, collapsing in the hallway, each from their own exhaustion.  They sobbed, my parents, because they could no longer go on.  I watched, fear creeping up my arms and legs, short of breath, unsure of what to say, or even of what to think.  So, supressing tears, I squeezed shut my eyes, and buried myself beneath the covers.
    That picture has forever been seared into my memory.
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Crocus 'Remembrance'  One of the earliest to bloom, flowers are a striking silvery-purple.  Crocus often burst through the snow in late winter and provide carpets of color when little else is stirring. Spring- and fall-blooming species extend the variety and season of bloom and deserve to be more widely planted. Leaves are grass-like and appear with, or after, the large flowers. These popular Dutch hybrids come in many varieties, including bicolor and striped selections. One species, crocus sativus, is the source of saffron.   (Gardening.com)

*      *      *
    As the sun pounded against the back of my neck, I crouched down in the garden, ripping out weeds.  My fingers were numb and raw from pulling at the harsh stalks of unwanted plants; dirt was shoved down underneath my fingernails.  Red knees, dark dirt clinging to them, were planted in the earth as my lungs labored in the intense heat.
    Squinting, I straightened my back, feeling my muscles scream in protest.  I turned around, looking across the yard to the house, and saw the apparition-like figure of my mother standing behind the closed sliding door on the deck.  Regardless of my exhaustion and frustration, I raised a filthy hand to wave hello to her.  Meekly, she raised her fingers, and waved to me; through the glass pane, her expression was a soft sadness.  I watched her for a moment as she floated away from the window.
*     *     *
    After missing I-95 in Connecticut, Mikey and I finally arrived at my family’s home in Hatfield, Massachusetts, late in the evening, two hours late.  It had been nearly two months since I had left home to go to college, and as we drove up to my house, I felt a strange sort of attachment.  The October foliage was at its peak; the landscape was a palette of fiery reds and oranges, blazing the mountains.  Golden mums and rusty marigolds still grew in the garden along the walkway, and I was struck with a deep fondness for my family.  I was nervous to see them again, and as the car rolled to a stop, I mentally prepared myself to go inside. Both friends and family had gathered, people who I loved dearly, and my apprehension began to melt into excitement.
    Shutting the car door, I looked up and caught the figure of my sister approaching, and figures in my house walking before the window.  There was an eerie chill to the air then, and my stomach went cold.  The look on my sister’s face spoke of something tragic.
    Llana held me in an embrace for a moment, but she was pale.  Quickly, she informed me.  My uncle Rejean had been found dead in his apartment in Quebec: a suicide.  But she didn’t put it that way.  She said simply, “Uncle Rejean hung himself.”  I cursed, and Mikey came up beside me, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder--he had never met my sister, or my family, and I cringed internally with the realization.  His first foray into my immensely complex family had to be something like this, another tragedy.  It felt as if someone had turned me on my head as I stood there in the street, the calm of an autumn evening descending quietly.
    I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t.  Shock had set in too deep as grotesque pictures flooded my overactive imagination.  My uncle had killed himself.  I saw Rejean in my mind, a tall sad man, with dark brown eyes, and the face of a Native American.  I saw him smoking his cigarettes with the plastic filters, drinking, slurring, crying, lamenting.  I heard his voice, thick with a French Canadian accent, “You have wonderful family.   Be thankful for that.”  I could see him stumbling at my cousin Sue’s wedding, inebriated beyond coherency.  I could see him laughing, or cooking a meal, or dancing.  He was a man too complex to understand; all at once frightening and yet, so lost, there was always a vestige of pity in my heart for him no matter what I knew he’d done.
    Once inside, instead of the tearful welcome I’d imagined, I immediately went to my mother and attempted my best to console her.  I hadn’t seen her in two months, but it felt as if I’d never left her arms as I embraced her, and she shook with grief.  Dinner was being cooked, and voices laughed from the kitchen, but in the hallway my mother and I were in a separate world.  I could hear Mikey talking with Jonathan, my godfather, and my sister ordering Matt about the kitchen.
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French Marigold Tagetes patula:  Durable, bushy annual with aromatic, deep green leaves. Plentiful small flowers 1 to 2 in. (2.5 to 5 cm) across, in shades of yellow, orange and red in summer to early fall. 12 in. (30 cm) tall and wide.  Native to Mexico and Central America, few flowers are as reliable and more widely--and easily--grown than marigolds. Their non-stop flowers bloom in intense shades and mixtures of orange, yellow, maroon, mahogany red, and creamy white. The pompon-shaped flowers are single, double, or crested. Plants come in dwarf (6 to 8 in. (15 to 20 cm)), medium (9 in. to 3 ft. (22.5 to 90 cm)), and tall (3 to 4 ft. (90 cm to 1.25 m)) sizes.  (Gardening.com)

*      *      *
    The Berkshires are brutal in the winter.  Snow blankets everything and the world becomes an endless expanse of white.  Usually, for children, this time of year would be a time of celebration--the prospect of sliding, and fort-building, always with the possibility of hot chocolate and a warm fire afterwards.
    But in my house, late in the winter of 1987, things were different.  Sitting in the window of our little ranch on Renee Drive in Dalton, Massachusetts, I watched my neighbors, the Kinney kids, enjoy the snow.  We had lovely snow that year, and the ski industry was booming up at Berkshire East and Brodie Mountain.  The snow was relentless, drifts up to my waist and beyond, branches falling from trees, vision obscured.  Yet, it always mildly amused me how, in spite of all the precipitation, the bold Berkshire inhabitants seemed to be able to maneuver and get on with their lives.

*      *      *

    Paul McCartney’s mother died when he was fourteen  years old.  She died of breast cancer.  Her name was Mary McCartney, and she was a prominent nurse.  Some say it was the loss of his mother that gave Paul his drive to succeed, and his perfectionist streak.  Right after his mother’s death, Paul McCartney met John Lennon.

*      *      *
    I turned my attention back to weeding but my mind wandered to my mother.  This was her sacred place, her garden.  “I go there to pray,” she said to me once, her warm brown eyes alive with a silent reverence.  “I feel part of God, when I’m there.”  And there I was, an intruder in her little cloister.  The tidy garden was an explosion of color and shape.  Never a professional gardener, really, my mother chose flowers that she found beautiful in her own eyes.  She doesn’t know the specific names of flowers, nor does she know where they come from.  She just finds a flower, notes if it’s a shade or a sun plant, and plants it where she wants to.
    Every summer, wherever we have lived, our back and front yard would be ablaze with a vivid burst of color.  My favorite, the cosmos, turned their heads to the sky in brilliant orange and pink.  My mother left behind a trail of gardens wherever she went; our family might move from one house to another, but the flowers would always remain.
    Cancer.  The word itself seemed a curse.  A villain, this disease had rendered my strong, lively, enchanting mother to a ghost.  It didn’t seem fair.  Seeing my mother struggle to just make it from one side of the house to the other, watching her lose all her hair, visiting her in the hospital . . .
    This summer, the garden was overgrown, wild.  My mother, reduced to a shadow--small, frail, all angles and eyes--could only watch as her beloved creation dwindled.  She had spent so much time, lovingly tending her garden, arranging every seedling and plant with care.  And now, what use was all the work?  To what purpose had it all served?  Weeds threatened to choke her beautiful blossoms.  It was such a lovely summer, they say, but I don’t remember it.  I remember painfully vivid images; the burning sun, the green grass, but everything seems shadowed with emotion.
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“Cosmos bipinnatus 'Sensation Mixed:  Bunches of daisylike flowers and graceful feathery foliage make these annuals a delight in both color and texture. Some varieties of this fast-grower have semi-double flowers, rolled quilled petals or bicolor striped colors. Use 3 to 6 ft. ( 90 cm to 2 m) tall plants as background, or in wild or naturalistic gardens. Dwarf forms, 1 to 2 ft. (30 to 60 cm) tall, are good for containers. Excellent cut flowers. Considered drought resistant, Cosmos grows best in full sun but will grow well and flower earlier in poor, fairly dry soils.” (Gardening.com)
*      *      *
     John Lennon, Paul McCartney’s best friend, was shot brutally and murdered, assassinated, outside his own home in New York City.  He had just released a new album entitled Double Fantasy after taking a five year musical hiatus to raise his son Sean with his wife, Yoko Ono.  Paul and John had finally patched up years of bickering between them.  They nearly reunited one night to play on Saturday Night Live.  But now, all hopes of a Beatles reunion were gone, dying with John Lennon’s last breaths.  Lennon/McCartney would be no more, simply, a memory of what once was.

*      *      *
 

    My mother had informed us all that she didn’t want to be home when the one year anniversary of her cancer detection came around.  She explained, with her eyes dark and thoughtful, that her summer had already been ruined once  She needed something beautiful to remember in place of it.  Now, her hair had grown back thick and curly, dark, with hardly a gray hair to speak of.  But, although she looked like herself once more, there was a softness in her that I never knew.  She would cry more easily, now, and there were lines in her face--not wrinkles--but lines of wear that were new.
    My  mother wanted to see England.  And so, we embarked on a family escape to England and Scotland for two weeks.
    We never expected the gardens, though.  The delicacy of an English garden is something few get to experience in full.  In late June, in England, the roses are all in full bloom.  And what roses!  Their blooms are larger than a hand’s width, and come in more vibrant colors than I ever imagined.  Not only were the blooms larger, but the plants were higher, and more plentiful.
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    'Sweet Surrender' Hybrid Tea Rose, Rosa 'Sweet Surrender'  The full, old-fashioned-looking silvery pink flowers are very fragrant and bloom all season on a low- to medium-sized upright shrub. Long, strong stems. Widely available.   Bred to have perfect, exquisitely-formed buds and long cuttable stems, the base of the plants tends to be bare and have somewhat angular top growth. Because of their pruning and maintenance requirements, and for easy viewing, many gardeners grow them in formal "rose beds." They're also grown in natural- or casual-style gardens.  (Gardening.com)

*      *      *

    Paul McCartney finally married in 1969, much to the fury and despair of his legion of female fans.  She wasn’t rich, or fabulously beautiful.  She was a photographer from New York, and and American; her name was Linda Eastman.  After a two-year relationship, Linda and Paul married.  They were two souls that seemed tailor made for one another.  Linda’s simple, pretty features smiled wildly in photographs, clinging to the proud and ever-composed Paul McCartney.  She had made the catch of the century.
    Over the next thirty years, Linda and Paul had four children--Mary, Stella, James, and Linda’s adopted daughter, Heather.  They performed together in Paul’s post-Beatles band, Wings, and they rallied for vegetarianism.  Linda had the privilege of taking the last known photos of the Beatles as a group.  In photographs, their love for one another was apparent.  They were a couple like none other, proving that celebrity marriages can last, and that there is hope.
    Linda McCartney died in 1998, in her family home in Sussex, England, with Paul at her side.  She was a victim of breast cancer.  News reports had disclosed she had found a lump in her breast, but other than that, no one knew the true story.  Paul suffered alone with his family as Linda’s health rapidly declined.  It was an end to another part of Paul’s life.

*      *      *

    I stood back from my afternoon’s work, the sweat mingling with dirt on my brow, and my back aching beyond belief.  I felt dizzy my body reacted to the prolonged heat of the sun, and with shaky knees, I swayed.  There was not a weed left in the garden now.  The stone path down the middle of the garden was clear, and the flowers all had more room to breathe in the sun.  I wondered, absently, if they could feel the difference now.
    Wiping my gritty hands on my shorts, I turned away from the garden, and proceeded to the house.  Inside, everything seemed so dark in comparison to the bright sun light.  My mother was at the kitchen sink, looking out the window at her garden.  Turning to me slowly, there were tears in her eyes.  She told me how much it meant to her that I had weeded her garden, and how hard it was to watch the weeds destroy it; and worse, to not be able to do anything about it.  It was out of her hands.
*      *      *
    There were no flowers at my uncle Rejean’s funeral, none that I can remember.  Even the priest seemed pale as he gave his sermon, and there was a rigid silence in the church.  I sat in the front pew, with my guitar nearby, blinking ahead of me, dwelling on the sadness of it all.  But I did not cry; I was done with crying.
    The night before, at another uncle’s house, my family  had gathered from all parts of Canada.  There was laughing, and gossip, as always.  They were laughing at my uncle Rejean’s death, they were making fun of it.  I was horrified, and withdrew with Mikey into the living room.  He, understanding neither French nor my family, didn’t understand exactly what had made me so upset.  I explained that, no matter how horrible Rejean had been, there was a certain level of respect I thought there needed to be.  I noticed my mother had disappeared from the scene; she’d been having an attack of acid-reflux that night, and I discovered her in one of the bedrooms, nestled into blankets.
    Hoarsely, she told me how her heart had been broken by her brothers and sisters and their attitude toward Rejean’s death.  Together, we sobbed for a man in the autumn of his life, who’d so tragically given up.  I confessed to her that I kept seeing images in my mind, terrifying images of how he’d died, and it frightened me to know how much he’d suffered.  We wept, clasped together, that night, until our eyes were sore from it.
    Back at the service, the priest nodded to me.  With shaky hands, not from nervousness but from emotion, I rose and went to the pulpit.  There, I began to sing a song, the only song I could knew would be fitting.  “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan, a bittersweet love song, I suppose, about someone so caught up in the torrential storm of their own lives, they cannot find escape.

    I did not weep, but as I sang, I prayed that all my aunts, uncles, and cousins would hear the words, and somehow, their hearts would soften for Rejean, in whatever way they could.
*      *      *
    My mother says I came out of the womb singing.  I figure, it was because both of my parents were musicians.  I was exposed to all sorts of wonderful music as a child--from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to Blondie.  But most importantly, there were the Beatles.  My mother, father, sister, and I are all certified Beatlemaniacs.
So, it was fitting, when we were in London, that we made our pilgrimage to Abbey Road.  London was unusually hot that June, right before the turn into summer, and all the gardens were afire with the light of the sun.  The sky was clear, and the streets were smoggy, but Abbey Road was an oasis.
    And indeed, there was an abbey on Abbey Road, a tiny, red brick abbey.  With a cry of joy, my mother rushed ahead of us, “Would you look at that rose?” she cried.  We all rushed forward, and peeking over the stone fence in front of the abbey, was the largest yellow rose I’d ever seen.  It might have been a Bredon rose, or a Tamora (David Austen).  Reaching out to touch it, my mother smiled brilliantly, feeling the soft petals between her fingers.  Her smile was radiant, she stood tall, and I saw her there in all her splendor.  Indeed, my mother had endured so much in her life, and yet, she still found beauty in the rose.  She had not wilted, in spite of pestilence; she had not rotted in spite of adversity; she had not ceased to bloom in spite of pain.

Works Cited

Beatles, The.  Let It Be.  LP, Apple Records, 1970.

David Austen Roses.  April 1, 2001.  http://www.davidaustinroses.com/en/

Gardening.com.  Flower Encyclopedia.  Sierra Home Network.  March 30, 2001.  http://gardening.sierrahome.com

McLachlan, Sarah.  Angel.  LP, Arista Records. 1996.