My mom's garden

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my mom’s death. Her death was a unexpectedly fast and devastatingly slow battle with breast cancer. She was much too young but sometimes it feels like forever ago that she died. But it’s only been one year.

Yesterday my family (husband and three kids) were joined by my father to have dinner and remember my mother. I wanted to do something special to remember the day but to not sit in our grief. I suggested we make paving stones for my mom’s garden. Well, I guess it’s our garden now since live in my parents’ house, but it will always be my mom’s garden. She loved the garden. It started out as just a rose garden but expanded to include whatever flower or plant my mom had a whim for each year. It is just beautiful and with my husband’s blessing (he likes to garden, I don’t), we are going to keep much of the garden the same. Come spring, we’re going to put these paving stones in my mom’s garden in her honor.

Christmas was also very important to my mom so we took some of her less favorite and least meaningful ornaments and placed pieces in the cement. (See the picture.) They probably won’t last very long, but we’ll know they’re part of the stones. It was wonderful to be part of a ritual where we all joked around and the kids thought very deliberately about what “grandma would love” as we all decorated.

It was important to have this moment with my family totally unrelated to the seminary and my ministry setting. It was important to see God at work in my own life.