With careful research into the needs and requirements of the plant, including culling information from the tag that came with it as well as research online, I successfully rendered the plant dead.
It was the most beautiful plant I’d ever seen.
I got it on a weekend when my parents were up to visit. My cat had been sick, but that day word arrived he was now doing well. I was enjoying my time with my parents and they bought me the plant and it seemed, at last, like a bright spot. I associated the plant with that day.
A week later my cat died. Other things happened. I desperately wanted the plant to live, some kind of memento of a good thing before it all happened. It felt like everything was dying around me. Having the plant sit on my table, drooping and dropping further into death was a strange kind of psychological torture.
“Hey, Julie, here’s a skeleton reminder of a good day you let die!”
I finally emailed my mother, proof that moms are eminently necessary at any age. I explained that the plant died. I apologized because they’d bought it for me and wasted their money. I told her I was very sorry and that I was feeling quite bad about it. I also said it had been such a good day and hinted that I wasn’t getting past this plant dying. Since my mother knows I’m nuts, she emailed back.
You are OK. It served its purpose and brought beauty into your life and a reminder of a good time together. Have a great day and I am praying for you. Mom.
“It served its purpose.”
My cat Brutus served his purpose (though I am still not able to put that behind me). This month served its purpose. The plant served its purpose. The pink, fragrant trees by the sidewalk served their purpose, bringing a smile to my face each morning as I walked to work this week but very soon to be done flowering. Nothing lasts forever and, at best, they serve their purpose.
That was absolutely what I needed to hear to stop the cycle of negative thoughts in my head that were strangely wrapped up in some plant that I couldn’t throw in the garbage, but was sitting on my table all but dead. It served its purpose; it was beautiful, still, on the day that news of my cat dying arrived. If it had been an equally-priced bouquet of flowers, it would not have lasted as long as the potted plant did. Yet, why did I think that plant had to exist forever just because it was in a pot? Couldn’t its dying be just that, and not some allegory of my personal failures or experiences over the past weeks?
When you’re feeling emotionally bruised, everything seems to hit hard. Strange.
I have a small pot of double impatiens sitting in a pot in its place. I bought them on sale, on my own, with no particular moment or person or memory being attached to their well-being. Impatiens, I think, is a very apt plant for a person like me who is assigning meaning to everything because I can’t sit and wait for things to play out on their own terms.
