The weight of grief…
It is heavy. For a little while it was light as air. It was listening to music for once again. I know I’m sort of fine when I can listen to music and sing. If I’m not fine I have to listen to myself. If I am I listen to Selena Gomez or t. Swift or Rammstien, or Enrique, or Celine. Anyone. My play list has every genre of music. If it’s good to me I will have it on there. Singing in the greenhouse like no one can hear me. If you have never sang in a greenhouse you are missing out. I’ve even been asked “Are you singing to the plants?” Yay, why?
It was lighter until it started to feel heavy. Not fine. It came out of nowhere. Actually I blame sawdust. I smelled sawdust. Not just any but from pieces of wood being cut for garden stakes in the building I was in. It made me cry. Not a lot just a little. Years ago I told myself this day was coming. That one day the smell of sawdust will bring me to tears. I was prepared? No. I was not. I walked in carefree and a little light and comfy to a building unknowing it would make me leave a little heavier.
I have bugs. Not me personally. Actually, before I start that’s not totally true, I was showering and apparently had a small spider either in my hair or on me. I looked down and she was floating away with her little legs kicking to the drain. I couldn’t handle it. I pulled her out by a leg and lay her out to dry. I checked three times on her body moving and wiggling on the side of the tub, I tried to dry her off, I blew lightly on her. Then she stopped. I cried. She died. She is gone. She probably has babies. She either died from drowning or from poisonous shampoo. It’s too soon to know. Hopefully there are no baby spiders in my hair. I went to properly flush her down the toilet and dropped her little body. Now I can’t find her. Now she is dead and missing.
Anyway, I have bugs in my greens house. Aphids. Big fat juicy aphids on my daisies. I do not like to kill bugs. I do not like them on my plants but I struggle to kill. (I keep hearing Dr. Seuss.) I do not like to kill even with toxic chemicals, especially. I can’t smash bugs. I can’t put them between my fingers and smear them into little flat juicy aphids full of my plant juices. I can’t flush them. I can’t run them over and I imagine I have millions unknowingly, oh, God!! I also can’t eat them!! Who eats bugs? Starving people. I am not convinced I would even then. Even covered in chocolate. Or in marinara sauce. I know I likely ingest bugs. This bothers me if I think too far. I am an avid camper. I know I have eaten them cooked over fires and mistakenly landing in my food. To then be cooked. Then eaten. Is there a word for people who eat bugs? Is it just carnivore? Likely. It needs its own word. There is a special word for this.
Stop. I have to kill these bugs. Daisies are sensitive to chemicals. In a large facility washing them off isn’t effective. I use systemic. I water with a chemical to get into the system of the plant to poison the aphids when they eat. To protect my daisies. Sometimes I let it go. But they are in the flower buds and distorting the flower. A Daisy is known for her flower. That’s it. They have to die. I am burdened with the weight of killing bugs.
I release stink bugs. They only stink if they are threatened so I make sure I’m not threatening. Then I pick them up and put them outside. They keep coming back. Likely because I’m not threatening enough. They are sort of fun to play with. If you put them on their flat backs they flip back over with their hind legs. I can only imagine what they are thinking. I am imagining it. I have one in my house now and sort of want to put her in my pocket to take her to work and show off her acrobatics to others. Then I can release her in my greenhouse where she can eat whatever she wants. Unless she eats my daisies. She will die if she eats daisies today. Assuming she is a she.
I was heavy. My shirt collar hurts. My toes hurt. I could barely lift my legs. My boots were too heavy. Burdened by the smell of sawdust. Someday I will smell sawdust and it will not bring me to tears. Just like once I thought someday I will smell sawdust and it will. I’m not at someday yet. Except I am. I want to the be at the next someday. But I’m not.
I am here. Today. Heavy from a loss so great I can’t handle my job. I can’t handle proper insect control. I need my aphids to live because my dad died. But they have to die. I needed that spider to be ok. But now she is missing. I needed the stink bug to enjoy her day and do flips on my table. I needed to mow. But his yard is full of tall grass from him not being here to mow and is full of bugs. Once it’s mowed it’s mowed by me and never him again. I wanted the grass to grow forever since the last time it was cut was by dad. I didn’t want to go into the garage today and smell sawdust again. Because he isn’t making it anymore. It is all just where he left it last. Everywhere I go.
I couldn’t breath. I felt too heavy to breath. I’m a small person. Tall but small. I felt full of heavy things. All my organs were heavy. I’m weighed down by my broken heart.
The days get harder. I am not a doctor or a nurse or a surgeon or a person who wears a mask. Except I am now. It’s not my job. Or it wasn’t. But now it is. Do I have more respect for careers that require them. No, I always had respect for these people. They kept me safe from things we didn’t know if they were there or not. My doctor didn’t think he had anything. He was showing that he cared enough of other humans who don’t know he knows that. He wasn’t protecting me from him. He was helping me feel like I am safe because of the fact no one knows if we know or not. We don’t know. We just don’t know if it helps to all wear them which is why we do. The uncertainty. It’s the effort. It’s kind.
I woke feeling like I had to justify why ai do. My therapist has spent years helping me feel less afraid of myself. I don’t feel afraid of myself. It is a simple act of kindness. For a while we have the opportunity to think differently. To protect the weak and vulnerable. To slow down. Breath with more thought. Practice slow controlled breathing.
Some do and some don’t. It isn’t supposed to feel like a personal choice. It isn’t supposed to be optional. It frustrated me when our business was called out for no one wearing them. This was just not true. Not just me but multiple people do. If they work outdoors of our facility they don’t until they have to interact. If it is slow and no one is there we water and tend to plants while we breath a little easier. But harder. A greenhouse as big as our retail greenhouse full of plants and people is hot especially with added radiant heat: especially adding a mask. It is hard to change the way we do things. It is hot to wear a mask just to water plants. It is hard to put it on properly to be around others. My mask is filthy. It looks like I’ve been in a garden. It has plant food on it. It’s the only thing I can think it is. It’s blue. My mask smells like brownies. Which makes no sense. It’s is hard to chat on the phone to a customer for proper watering and plant care muffled through a mask. We have wipe our phones down. Everything has to just be thought of. It is hard to manage situations based on situations.
It is an added weight for me. This uncertainty. I don’t vent to the world on social media pages. I am my own critic. I work through things without needing others to hear me. Actually it’s more that I don’t want to. I’m still afraid to. I want it to be that I do not do these things and it is confidence in myself but I really think it is fear. Only because I’m afraid of so much that it just has to be true.
I cried thinking that it is unfair I have to do so much alone. On my own. I’m supposed to say on my own. If you say alone you feel it. If you say on my own it sounds stronger and you feel less alone. But still alone. Same feeling just less of the one with new words to get to it, added strength to the alone.
I want someone to do half of everything for me. Or I did yesterday. I wanted married again. Only to someone who would actually do half of everything for me. I don’t know what this would feel like since I didn’t have this. I want a husband? Wanted.
I spent the day thinking I wanted a husband. I wanted one when I had one. No, needed one. Except I don’t. Mine I had consumed me. It’s easy to do. I can see that now. If I know too much I feel too much. I feel too much just by being in a room approximately 6 feet from a person or even a bug. This distance has always been my distance. Any closer and I will consume them like wildfire. Lose myself in the flames. Back to square one. Which is a foundation crumbled to the ground and even below ground. I would have to build it all over again. Because of someone else. So I keep my distance. Except from bugs.
I am fine on my own. Fine. That’s the word you say when you are anything but. How are you? Fine. I’m fine. Except I’m not. I’m heavy, alone, a bug killer, not married, can’t mow… I’m weighed by grief. I need lighter clothes. My boots are to heavy. But I’m also fine, because my dad died and he will never mow or make sawdust again so I’m allowed to feel not fine. Which is fine.
Aspenleaf 