Hello,
This is Jacob Watson.
I am continuing to share from my book,
Gifts of Grief,
A Man's Revelations After Sudden Loss.
This is chapter four,
Green Leaf Harbors.
Most of these gifts are harvested from being outdoors,
Around the house,
On the back deck,
And around the gardens.
I will offer a short meditation time of absolute silence so that you can harvest the gifts from your own life.
This is for your own meditation and will be about three minutes long.
The first gift is to simply be outdoors,
Which Christine loved,
To be outdoors in nature.
As I've said earlier,
The first thing that I saw after driving back from Marion,
Where Christine died,
Was her gardens.
It was summer,
August,
And they were in full bloom.
There were flowers everywhere,
All around our house.
As the days unfurled,
I spent more and more time on the back deck in the comfortable chair that I loved.
It was easy to remember the day that Christine and I stood there on the deck and looked at the back garden and noticed the lawn itself was square,
Not congruent with the curving wall made of stone from the street out front that Christine had the city pile up in our front yard for over a year until we could use it.
The wall curved gracefully from the side of the garage around the garden to the deck,
And it was a beautiful reverse s-curve,
Not like the lawn at all.
I remember the day that Christine and I stood there on the deck with a friend of ours who was a professional landscaper.
He was very quiet looking out at the lawn and he finally said,
You know,
I think that the lawn needs to have a curve at the very end of it,
And so eventually we did that.
We made a curve,
A gentle arc.
Christine and I dug into the soil at the end of the garden.
The green grass came to here,
Well not so green,
But the grass came to here and then we put in black plastic to separate the grass from the brown soil of the back garden where the flowers and of course the old Buddha sat.
As I stood on the deck and looked at what Christine and I had done years ago,
I was reminded again of impermanence,
How the beautiful flowers that she planted,
Gifts that they were,
Eventually faded and died as the seasons unfolded.
Christine used to love the fall,
The colder temperatures,
And for me it was a gift to remember that and to remember the Buddhist teaching of impermanence,
That everything will change.
Sitting there on the deck while it was still summer,
A butterfly came and fluttered around my head,
A reminder of the butterflies,
The monarch butterflies,
That surrounded me as I walked away from this site that I was choosing for her memorial service.
So many gifts.
Now,
Sitting there on the deck,
I looked up and saw the trees arcing overhead,
One from the left and one from the right.
Neighbors trees,
Because I didn't have any,
But the neighbors did,
And the green leaves formed harbors and as I looked,
I could see that the harbors provided shelter,
Shelter from the open ocean.
Shelter for the little sailboat that I was sailing to go into and anchor.
The green leaves formed shelters that were slightly different every single day,
But nonetheless provided shelter from the storms,
The storms of grief.
Sitting there looking up,
I realized that shelters were everywhere,
Provided by nature,
Both above my deck and everywhere outdoors,
Everywhere in nature.
And I remember the many trips that Christine and I took to local state parks,
Reed State Park,
Bradbury Mountain State Park,
And I remember taking a trip out there after Christine died with my daughter,
Carrying some of Christine's ashes.
We climbed the hill and reached the top,
A bare expanse with a view off to the southwest.
We found a little crevice,
An area about two or three yards wide,
Out of which grew some birch trees,
And birch trees were trees that Christine loved.
We planted Christine's ashes in that section with a view out towards the sky and over towards South Freeport to the southwest.
South Freeport had a lot of history for me.
It's the place that I first landed when I sailed a small wooden boat to Maine years and years ago,
And there it was again,
That teaching of impermanence.
This time it came around again,
The gift to know that shelter was everywhere,
All around me,
And that I could create anything I wanted in my life,
Because I was sheltered.
Back on the deck at home,
I was sitting one day enjoying the shelter provided by the leaves overhead,
And a small brown hummingbird came from my right side,
Fluttered in front of me for a minute,
And flew away to my left,
A reminder of the original brown hummingbird that came and told me that Christine was fine,
Another gift.
And I felt that the whole house in back of me was full of Christine,
Full of the furniture that we had chosen,
Full of the ways that we had decorated the house.
It was all Christine.
She was there in spirit.
And now I offer some quiet time,
Some meditation time for you,
For you to remember the gifts of your own life,
Perhaps recollected because of the gifts that I've been sharing.
We'll have about three minutes of quiet time.
It's time for our meditation to conclude,
So please slowly and gently come out of the quiet time.
As I too come out of the meditation time,
I am reminded of the peace and quiet that I found visiting my brother,
Where he had a garden and a waterfall.
When I came home from visiting him,
And after Christine had died,
I realized that I wanted my own waterfall,
My own little water fountain on my deck.
So I bought and installed a small bamboo water fountain that provides gurgling water sounds,
A peaceful background for just sitting on the deck meditating.
I am reminded of Alan Watts' words,
I hear the sound of water,
And that's quite as important as anything I've got to say.
I sit there on the deck and I watch as a small white butterfly wobbles from the back garden across the lawn to the deck,
A reminder that all is well.
I remember years ago when Christine and I were about to buy a new car,
And she said,
I want a special dark blue color.
And I said,
That's going to take a longer time.
She said,
That's okay.
So we waited probably three months for a new color.
And she was right.
It served us so well and was beautiful to behold.
And it held a lesson for me.
Oh,
You can have what you want.
It may take a little longer,
But this life gives you what you want.
Yet another gift from Christine.
As I sit in my comfortable chair and look overhead at the green leafy harbors overhead,
I realize that they are everywhere,
That shelter is in my life and part of my life.
Indeed,
Shelter is everywhere,
Protecting me from the storms of grief.
