One of my favorite things about my profession is getting to know the clientele as I work on their projects. It’s interesting how something as simple as installing plants or sodding a yard can segue into a deeper, more meaningful experience. Maybe it’s the intimacy of living, growing things being planted at one’s home or the fresh air and sunlight promising new beginnings. Whatever it may be, landscaping summons emotion and I’m lucky to be a part of it.

On a most recent project, I found myself discussing death with a client. I’ve known her for only a short time, but I knew her son well. She lost him two years ago and it still sits heavy with her, as it should. She doesn’t hide her pain and why should she? It hurts.
Oftentimes people find it more comfortable if others would disguise their emotions, but that only benefits one party and it’s just not the way.

I believe grief must be witnessed. To understand grief you have to grasp it as if you were viewing it through the eyes of the mourner. The everyday world may look the same for us, but for the bereaved it’s different, it’s changed and so have they.

One day we are ourselves; waking up, drinking coffee and planning our day. Then suddenly without notice we become the mother of a dead son, the sister of a dead brother, the wife of a dead spouse, or the child of a dead parent. It’s fragile this life, and we all know it. We just seem to forget that fact until it’s too late.

What makes our mere existence so difficult is that life never announces those last times. The last time we rode in a car with a friend while listening to music or the last smile and wave while driving away. Or how about that last goodbye or the last I love you, the one we never saw coming. We experience a first time so clearly but those lasts are elusive and cruel.

Our minds scramble when death dares to challenge our being. We search for answers and solutions as if comfort will follow. We begin to think if I had only done this, or I had only said that, then surely the outcome wouldn’t be the same. We punish ourselves with such thoughts, still knowing it won’t change a thing.

Reminiscing about the deceased is a sleight of hand. Visiting those memories presents happiness, sadness and comfort as one, it’s baffling knowing that pain is collateral for a brief smile.

Memories follow us around like a shadow and visit us through our dreams. They live in pictures and videos and the faces of our kin. But how light it would feel to just walk about our day without the pursuit of that all too familiar hurt. Though it’s seductive and cunning, it’s almost too much for a person to handle.

What no one tells you about grief is this: It comes twofold and it never lets go. We grieve whom we’ve lost and we grieve who we were.

That recent conversation with my client and now friend offered a very profound thought shared by her. She said, “I wish everyone would stop saying that time heals everything, because it doesn’t, and I will never get over my loss.” She was right in saying it and feeling it too. Perhaps it’s not said enough.

We don’t get better with time, time just becomes different. For some it moves slow and others too fast. There is nothing more jarring than the days after a funeral. The visitors have gone, the food is put away and the noise turns to silence. The world keeps spinning yet for the mourner it stands still.

In death you don’t just lose a person. You lose habits, routines, anticipation and sometimes purpose… Hello death, goodbye me.
But there’s life in death. Although gone, the deceased live through us and within everything we see. No one dies when their name lives on our tongue. Their light shines with the sun and their breath is in the wind.

My grieving friend told me that her landscaping was exactly what she needed. I assumed for a distraction but I was wrong. She said it was good for her and good to create a new beginning.

We all wish we could go back to a certain place in time, not to change it but to feel it again. There’s nothing wrong with visiting the past as long as you know you can’t stay.

New beginnings don’t replace what’s gone, they just teach us a different way to remember. With a cautious step we learn to walk into the sunlight, breathe the fresh air and gently whisper to ourselves… Goodbye death, hello me.

Clay Bowen is a Columbus native who cooked professionally as a chef in fine dining for 12 years and appeared on the third season of Top Chef. He is also a licensed landscape horticulturist. Email him at [email protected].