Dreaming of the Garden by Jess Henshall – Part IV
‘When I die, I want to be burnt,’ announces my mum as we sit in the partial shade of the growing hawthorn. ‘I want you to cremate my body and bury my ashes under a tree. A beautiful one. Something that flowers each year, a hawthorn perhaps. I want to be part of something living.’
I think of our garden as a living memory. My parents are embodied in every corner of the space. The surrounding wrought iron fence, the blackened wooden cladding, the stacks of drying logs in their shelters and the little studio are all products of my dad’s craft. The hawthorn, the rowan, the ferns, lichen and moss that grow in the gaps of the garden, and the weeds left for the bees, all given life as my mum’s hands planted them into the earth.
Our lives have happened in this garden. The space has changed as we have, evolving each year to adapt to our needs and our visions, becoming a sanctuary to escape to, to breathe in.
When I sit in our garden, nestled amongst the new growth of spring, I think of Rossetti’s poem ‘Shut Out’:
The door was shut. I looked between
Its iron bars; and saw it lie,
My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green:
From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,
From flower to flower the moths and bees;
With all its nests and stately trees
It had been mine, and it was lost. […]
For a while I thought my garden was lost to me, that my body wouldn’t be strong enough to walk the steps down to its terraces, but the limitations of my body made me fight to hold onto it, and to notice all the small details when I did come to it again. Ferns grow in the cracks in the granite, mirroring the Japanese art of Kintsugi where ceramics are repaired with fine gold dust and resin. Life sprouts from what we thought was broken, and gives us the hope to carry on when we feel like we can’t. I am learning to trust in myself, and to trust in the continuation of new life.
Sat beneath the hawthorn, talking about death as we watch the tree come into blossom, the pathway of our lives is woven through the garden. I think I like the idea of being scattered beneath a tree, to become part of the colours and textures that form our home. A living landscape of memoriam. We don’t plan to die, but this image offers us a sort of solace. We will always strive to be part of the natural world, and right now this space, our garden, roots us to the earth.
I dreamt of the garden.
It had waited for me.
by Jess Henshall