watering plants

This is part two in my own personal reflections on grief. Along with commentary about a book about life falling apart, weird 90s N64 games, and attempting to keep orchids alive.

When my mother was ill one day, she asked me to make sure I watered the plants outside. I was much of a plant guy but when your terminally ill mother asks you to keep the landscaping fresh you give it a shot. As her illness progressed I kept on doing that and started propagating succulents as an activity we could do together. On one of my mom’s last trips to chemo she grabbed a whole handful of succulent pieces from the hospital planter and thrust them into my hands with a playful smile. I used to never understand the appeal of houseplants and could only think of gardening as some kind of archaic hobby for people who want to pretend they still are farmers. But in the days after my mother passed, it was essentially what I would do compulsively all day. Before and after the funeral, seemingly everyday a new orchid would appear at the front door as a part of condolences packages. I’d carefully water it, repot it when it grew larger, would try to prune off rotten roots, and fail at keeping them from burning in the California sun. I had 20 of them at one point. And in the course of a year they thrived, rotted, succumbed to small white bugs, rebloomed, repropogated and died. The first few that passed felt like another failure, the ones that made it a miracle, and eventually I came to accept that they would come and go. At my home my neighbor would give me the ones she received and they pile up. Later I moved towards growing simple vegetables, easy house plants, and attempt propogations. Like the Orchids a lot of plants died, but with experience I could understand why and also marvel when ones that should have died persisted on.

Being close to a natural process like new life emerging from a seed and a seemingly healthy peace lily flopping over one day teaches us that rebirth, spontaneous growth, and unnerving ends are all in fact natural, a part of what makes the world ebb and flow. Existing within all of this, we as people are blessed to know that we can influence these process but also are completely at their mercy. What made handling my mother’s illness extremely painful and difficult was that it was terminal. What made it in some ways a burden that could be lifted was that it was terminal. When I would tell people my mother was diagnosed with cancer and that she had maybe a year to live at best. Most would try to encourage me that the terminal part might be optional, and yes sometimes doctors are wrong. It was only a certain eastern orthodox monk I had met in Kosovo, another American who somehow got shipped off there who spoke to me with a clear voice in this time. He told me that to be with someone dying is holy, that like witnessing the birth of a child it was the moments where we can see that the lines between the physical and the spiritual blurred. He told me to stay close and to remember that my relationship with my mother would never truly end only change. He told me that he was there when his father passed, I sensed that the relationship had been difficult. He told me that now his relationship with his father is better now in many ways. Perhaps now they can have more one on one time.

In the middle chapters of Jonathan Martin’s How to Survive a Shipwreck, Martin explains what I mean when I say a burden that is unbearable is one that can be lifted. Martin explains in his metaphors that the shipwrecks of our lives offer us the choice of sinking, swimming, or letting go. We can crumble under life’s tragedies and just withdraw, we can fight and argue with reality, or as is usually what eventually happens we can give in and let the experience take us where it will. Often we do all three in steps, first we are shock and denial (sink) and then we try to fight or bargain our way out (swim) and eventually weather we agree to or no we just get taken away and acceptance is the only eventual conclusion possible.

The N64 cult classic Majora’s Mask is often likened to being a game about the stages of grief. And while I think it has more to do with trauma in particular, both can apply and there’s a very obvious parallel between the game’s progression and the stages of grief. your character is initially surrounded by people in denial of doom looming over their heads. The game repeats itself in a three day cycle and on the first day you are put back into a state where everyone is back in denial again and again only to sometimes grasp what is going on by day three, long after anything can be feasibly done.

When you finally regain your footing after the initial stages of the game. Your character is turned back into human form, while still capable of turning back into the shrub you were cursed into. your given a magical song of healing to use on his adventure and sent off. The previous entry in the Zelda games had you play songs to transport around, open doors and make progress in some shape or form. But I found it noteworthy that your character instead is first granted a song that’s meant to heal, not solve. As a kid I didn’t really get that subtly but now it hits different.

Your character initially goes to four different places experiencing loss yet reacting in different ways. One is a poisoned swamp that is about to scapegoat an innocent person for supposedly causing it. The next is a mountain village trapped in a forever winter where the local hero has disappeared (and is discovered dead by your character). The third is by the seaside and is suck in a kind of melancholy coupled by perpetual storms. And the last is a valley filled with zombies still fighting a long gone war between two kingdoms. Each is physically and mentally afflicted and as you heal the land you also heal it’s inhabitants. We often think of our distress, anxiety, and grief as a mental problem to think our way out of, but I appreciate that here the connection between the physical and the mental is highlighted.

Across each your character takes on new identities and new forms to: cool the anger and remove the poison in swamp, comfort the grieving mountain villagers and return sunshine and warmth. Qwell the storms and return lost children in the bay. Heal a half zombified man and make peace in the land of the dead. Each level of the game is sequentially different reactions to trauma that often follow each other. First we want to fight and find someone to blame, then we call out in terror and despair, then we shutdown, and finally even if it seems hopeless we can let healing come in.

And what’s interesting too is that for each level, when your character finds a new body to inhabit it’s not just you in a new body but someone else’s. Each new role you take is from someone died trying themselves to fix their home’s problems. And each of them in some way had to let go and trust that your character would do what they themselves could not. Each body, therefore, is not just a new tool or vessel for your character; it’s a story, a life that has ended in hope and desperation, but that you yourself continue. Sometimes quite literally as the character in game recognize you as the person who had passed. Creepy but also in a sense comforting, or well comforting for the characters embodied since their aims can and are accomplished by your player.

The one thing that seemed to quiet my mind as my mother faded, was the relentless pursuit of more support groups, more studies, more diet tips to somehow push back against cancer. And likely a outright panic attack within me. It seemed hopeless to loose my mother at that point, we had just started to really get along and she deserved a new beginning as covid faded and she made peace with her divorce. I wanted her at my wedding, at my child’s birthday, I needed to see her better in the hopes that maybe I too could be better.

It was at that low time that I was blessed to have plenty of figures from either the cholangiocarcinoma foundation or reddit of all places to talk to me in the middle of the night when I was mentally falling apart. One guy I would talk to is a 20 something medical student from Oman who’s mother was further along in her illness than mine was. He told me that she could no longer speak to him anymore but would purse her lip to kiss him each night. He told me that in the end, he promised his mother that he would do what he could to take care of himself even when she’s gone. He told me that he would pray for me daily and asked I do the same, and told me that if I wanted to care for my mother even after she was gone. I should care for my sister and myself since we were what was left of her. That man gave me a tremendous gift by sharing that with me.

Back in Martin’s book he remarks that once we let go it’s inevitable that in our thrownness we experinece the feeling of deep abandonment. That it’s often a struggle to eat, sleep, wash ourselves, and be human when our life shipwrecks. But its the most vital time to do so and eventually let go of the ego enough to let other people come and help you as well. Martin points out that even in wreckage, love and grace are present and all around us. In the form of people who will show up when you’re at rock bottom. In the beauty of a sunset or a cool breeze.

You have to trust the process says Martin, realize that while you have built an impressive ship to take on life. In truth the sea moves you in your ship or in person. The tide will always act upon you and move you to and fro, with an ebb and flow. The hardest part about hard experiences is often our lack of control but it’s often that what’s brings us closest to what we need to know.

Majora’s Mask, includes a lot of masks. Some like the ones I discussed before are about taking on other identities (and traumas) to gain new abilities which are essential to beat the game. But many are optional, and involve side quests to resolve often minor issues in the world. But they matter to the people involved and slowly your character, previously a stranger becomes a beloved neighbor who assists people in finding fulfillment at the end of the world. And while this again all gets wiped away every three days you somehow still cling to the masks, the experiences you had being a integral part of someone’s story and life. When you get to the final level of the game in the land of warring zombies. You don’t gain a new body but instead by playing your magic healing music return life to normal for one family, and by doing so can get around the valley unscathed by it’s zombies and other monsters. For a game throw together in less than a year it is rather deep. If you help other heal, it might just make you a more competent person, and that itself will help you heal.

What’s interesting about my experience playing the game at this point is that I completely forgot at this point that my character was originally lost in the woods looking for a lost friend and source of guidance. Instead we were focused on what was going on in the weird upside down apocalyptic world that surrounded us. In the last stage of the game your character is able to turn the world literally upside down and turn into a giant. At this point you’ve grown enough by helping others through their pain that even as a child you function as some kind of terrifying miracle worker. Making it rain and removing sickness via a small hand flute.

My gardening style is decidedly somewhat chaotic and I usually make peace with what grows and what doesn’t in my given space. Seeing what can come each day and what change happens brings me peace. Martin in his book tells us that when our life comes apart, the next step we should take is examine weather a return to safety and stability is truly the goal we should aim for. I was told in therapy when I was first grappling with my mom’s diagnosis that I should let the experience change me. This was a hard thing to accept. And I believe it’s work isn’t finished yet and that’s ok. There’s some pain still there but it’s less distressing when you stop resisting and see that you in fact float among the waves.

to be continued in part 3