Digging In

by Loretta Nyhan

At his service, everyone said he was still with me, but the truth was that not only was he gone, parts of me went with him. I missed them, too, and like Jesse, they weren’t coming back.

The thing is, no one tells you what to do when the parting happens. And they forget to explain that when death is sudden, the parting is actually a ragged tear, not a clean separation. It leaves all the ends unfinished, and they just unravel and unravel and . . .

“Pick a few things you don’t want to let slide, and let the rest sort itself out,” he said gently after one particularly rough day. “When someone leaves this world, everything else gets jostled because of the empty space. You’re gonna land in the wrong spot for a while. Sooner or later, you’ll find where you fit again.”

Everything can be learned, you know? Some people learn sooner, others later. Not a big deal if the outcome is the same.”

Maybe freedom had nothing to do with loss. Maybe it had everything to do with joy.

“It’s the kind that pulls you by the hair. The unexpected jolt. It’s merciless, and it doesn’t allow you to change cell by cell, cushioning the blow with time. It smacks you into a new reality. It forces you to examine things you’d rather leave under a rock.”

But what happened when “us” became “me”? Isolation. Loneliness. Fear.

The flimsy young plants had taken root for the most part, and they were careening through adolescence like teens on a bender, their leaves seeking independence by growing into places I hadn’t predicted. Plants did not merely grow tall; they grew wide, curious about their surroundings, eager to seek nourishment from anywhere they could get it. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes I had to prune them back or watch a branch snap and wilt. My garden was a patchwork of failures and successes. I loved it.

That person—that loving, devoted, oblivious person—was someone I definitely wanted back. She was caught in a quicksand of grief, and I had to figure out how

to help her escape.