Today I was drawn toward a clump of blossoming Canada
goldenrod, glowing bright yellow in the afternoon sun. It was about four feet
tall and teeming with insects. There were all kinds of flies, wasps, and bees
climbing over the flowers in a feeding frenzy. As I leaned over to get a closer
look at the bumblebees, I noticed a subtle herbal aroma. Burying my nose in a
cluster of flowers, careful not to get stung, I inhaled its sweet and slightly
medicinal scent. Most of the goldenrod I’ve visited in the city is already past
its best, the colour faded to dull straw, and the nectar tapped out. These
blooms were fresh and vibrant. It’s like I found a secret pocket of high summer
on this east Vancouver boulevard. I took a few shots with my camera, but I knew
it would fail to capture the dreamlike quality of what I had witnessed.
August in Vancouver is a bittersweet time of the year, when
summer seems to be fully arriving and threatening to leave at the same time. It’s the time when the number of bees
and variety of insect species starts to ebb and dwindle as fall approaches. So
much of my daily routine is built around exploring the relationships among insects
and flowers, that lack of insect floral activity leaves me anxious. Working in
the garden helps me internalize this transition into fall. As I begin to
harvest spent lavender flowers and the seedpods from nodding onion, I gradually
come to terms with the changing of the seasons and the sharp notes of dried
plant material that signal the coming cold. Seasons are dynamic in nature,
gardens are always in a state of flux, so one must internalize this reality as
well. Some days I want to have the superpowers to play with time and
to hold onto summer just a bit longer.
August seems to be a particular month when I ritually grieve
some personal losses. Last fall, I lost my father, and this month we are taking
his ashes home to Saskatchewan. We’ll be seeking a stage of closure to the long
process of saying good-bye. There have been other recent losses this summer,
and I find myself in a tangle of the weeds of grief. As a part of the healing process,
I have been immersing myself in natural settings whenever I can. Being a
prairie person, I’m a bit suspicious of forests, but my friend has a cabin on the
Sunshine Coast surrounded by some pretty nice looking trees. There are lots of
stately Douglas fir and big-leaf maples that ripple and dance in the coastal
breezes. On afternoon in early July I stood in a ray of sunlight and watched a
tiny object flutter down from the forest canopy. Thinking it was a delicate
wind-borne seed, I bent over to examine it. It was the mottled wing of a
butterfly. A bird had likely made a meal of the body and clipped off the wings.
It was evidence of the cycle of loss and regeneration, gently evoking the
bittersweet comfort of the natural order of things.
Grieving is something that happens in private and in public.
As social animals, we need to share the experience as a form of affirmation and
finding ways to slowly fill the space that our loved one has left in our lives.
And our father left a very big space in our hearts. Sharing grief defines
grief, gives it the shape and form, the finite qualities we need to see so that
we can ultimately let it go. There is a phenology of grief. As we pass through
the seasons, memories connected to that time of the year surface, reminding us
of the deep connections this person has in our history. As we move into late
summer, I am reminded of all the times we celebrated the season by taking
photos in fields with the swath and the bales against a deep blue prairie sky.
Of course there were family photo ops with crocuses and pussy willows every
spring and snowsuits and snow drifts in the winter.
Dad taught me to get outside, take my camera and let my body
enjoy the natural sensory delights that surround me. He taught me to connect
with people, be fully present with them on everyday activities and special
occasions. He taught me to take pictures of the full range of gifts life
presents, even if it’s in the metaphorical sense of storing images in your
memory rather than on a hard drive. Some images burn themselves onto our
heart’s memory even when there is no photographic record. There was an evening
in my childhood in deep winter when I lay my snowsuit on my wooden sled,
looking up at the stars and thinking how very lucky I was to live in this
quiet, beautiful world. There are no photos or videos of this experience, just
a really powerful and lasting memory. I can easily recall the fuggy scent of
our dog Lunar drooling on me in the front seat of dad’s gas truck, the prickly
texture of the sunflower stems in mom’s garden, and finding a white arrow point
in the soft sand at the mouth of a gopher hole. These recollections I keep in
my heart’s pocket and take them out when I need inspiration and consolation. As
we head home to Saskatchewan in another celebrate of dad’s life, we are
inspired by him to make every day a celebration of life itself.
I spent many hours in peaceful solitude on the prairie
during my childhood, gathering critters from the dugouts to put under a
microscope, taking note of the phenology of wildflowers and watching the ground
squirrels play hide and seek. But I also spent many hours in the silent company
of my father, collecting interesting rocks, driving to ponds to see migrating sandhill
cranes and snow geese, and exploring abandoned homesteads. Sometimes dad would
just invite me to jump in the car and take me and Lunar on an adventure,
without a word of explanation. He’d bring his camera and we’d go look for the
horned owl that liked to perch in the window of an empty farmhouse.
We’d take
photos until the sun went over the horizon and we lost the light. I miss his
companionship, and think about how he would enjoy the thrum of insects around
the purple coneflowers and brown-eyed Susans in the gardens in mid August in
Vancouver. In honor of my father, I will stay out until dusk and photograph the
bees lay sleeping in their petals until I lose the light. I will walk home,
thinking how lucky I am to live in this complex, beautiful world. I will celebrate
the ephemeral nature of goldenrod.
