water
Dear Ciara,
I haven’t been well. Just a cold, but it has been lingering. My anxiety has been higher than normal too, exacerbated by an approaching dentist visit, but that is neither here nor there. I’ll keep you updated. What I am really here to write about is this: another dear friend—and an important chorister in our choir—has passed. I am just without words.
It happened so suddenly. The Organist and I had only just had her over for dinner, then last week, she was hospitalised with a heart issue. She was born with a congenital heart defect, but she had managed it up until the age of 75. This time, surgery was deemed unviable. She passed shortly after.
I am overwhelmed with grief. This is the second (and for The Organist, the third) friend we’ve lost this year. While all have been older, none of them were old enough to pass. They still had many years to live, many things to do. My insides are hollowed out by stolen life. It feels unfair—cruel. I am turning to faith. I’ve prayed and meditated on the cycle of life and death, yet these events only feed my anxiety. And it is ravenous. I’ve had a really good year, but now surrounded by death, my hypochondriasis is flaring up. My mouth is full of ulcers. I’m so tired.
But we persist. Dug out the sweet potato vine to reveal one single sweet potato. It is quite large, which is good, but I expected to pull out more than one. I don’t really know what happened there. I turned the vine into green mulch and fed the soil with it. Planted some of my rosella and chilli saplings in the bed, but they are struggling to put down roots in this heat. I keep having to use the sprinkler, which feels illegal given I grew up with long periods of drought. My tropical life, in contrast, is all water. Kate Llewellyn writes in The Floral Mother:
“Water is the environment in which we first grow. The sperm swims. The foetus lies in water. We are a kind of fish. Or else an underwater diver linked by a pipeline of food and air to that boat, our mother.”
And then:
“Water in all forms, sea or rain, lake or river, gives life and death. Nothing else is as radical as water in its effect on life.”
I think of the friends I’ve lost floating down a stream. Their destination is unclear. Perhaps heaven is the stream. The leaf litter at the bottom provides shelter for yabbies and eels. Water plants burst from the nutrient-rich soil.
The song for today is:
Chains of Love — Charli XCX
I am very excited for Charli’s next era. The industrial sounds juxtapose nicely with the Romantic content. I’ve been listening to Chains of Love on repeat for days now. I’ll likely grow sick of it if I continue.
Love,
The Gardener