Grief Garden: A Photo Essay
Title: Grief Garden, a photo essay
Earlier this summer, I spent time with Bradley in his garden, remembering his mom, the wonderful Debbie Mae Glenda Gionet. Together, with Lisa Glover Floral Design we created a photo essay exploring the connection between grief & gardening, cultivation, memory, love and loss. Today we are sharing this photo essay on the anniversary of Debbie's passing.
*TW: grief, cancer.
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Grief Garden: "It Won't Rain Always" - Photo Essay
Mom loved Dahlias for about as long as I can remember. Growing up in Surrey, we had a huge bush of burgundy dinner plate dahlias with white tips. At our acreage, they didn't perform well, but she tried. However, moving to the suburbs was a free for all because anything will grow here. Being limited on space there was a running joke that when I came home with a rose bush, Mom would say "let's go, I'm off to get another dahlia!" -- and she was quite serious. Last year we planted 48 dahlias, one for every year Mom and Dad were married.
This year I planted 68. One for every year she lived.
My name is Bradley Gionet. "Who you are" is an interesting question when it sometimes feels like our identity is so many different things and quite circumstantial on how we sum it up. Of all the things "I am" it feels like Son is the highest honour.
Our family has always had a garden and when we moved to this TINY lot on Promontory, we really wanted to make it something that felt like "home" even though space was no longer so generous for us. We brought with us several truck loads of perennials from our old acreage when we moved and as the decade went on added a lot of other things, often planted in memorial for the many people we have lost. Like everything, the garden evolves. A widening here, an addition there, a new angle, replacing and dividing. There is something about a garden that teaches us so much about life. Messy. Out of control sometimes. It is also quite cyclical. The circle of life in a way. Being in a space with plant life and landscaping, flowers remind me that all things come and go, whether we are ready for them to leave or not. We can rot away into the dirt or take what is left behind to try, best as we can, to grow something beautiful from what remains.
Mom was the solid, steadfast foundation that everyone else in our immediate and extended family relied upon. My aunt called her "The North Star". Always there. We never imagined a world where the rest of us would be navigating daily life alone, but at 68 my mom passed from colon cancer and now here we are. My mother was always a confident and strong woman but watching her fight cancer for 11 months before her death showed all of us just how strong she really was. Mom was so determined she was going to beat this-- she was in active dying for nearly a week, where in most cases the final stages last only a few hours.
She was creative, kind, empathetic, and supportive. She could also be moody, quite strict, and someone who struggled giving up control. I don't remember a time when travelling anywhere when Mom wouldn't be quite demanding that I call her when I got there.
Mom was a very hard worker and had the misfortune of believing that others should work as hard as her. She set the bar high. A giving person, but also someone who detested laziness. She helped just about everyone, but disappointment would come if they didn't then help themselves and others once their situation improved.
When I think of my best qualities, most I got from my Mother. When I think of my worst qualities, well, I think she gave me those, too. I am pretty sure she would agree.
I expected grief. That anticipation came the day of Mom's diagnosis. I knew the sense of loss would be immense, but what I didn't understand is just how strong that grief would hit over, and over, and over again. Being in the room with Mom as she took her last breath was something I was not prepared for. I thought I had another 20 years! When I close my eyes I see how cancer destroyed her body, I see her face that moment she was declared dead. This was a face I knew so well, now just a shell of the person I knew the most. Unrecognizable, disfigured, frightening. They don't warn you how disturbing that moment of death can be, yet somehow, it is also the most spiritual and beautiful thing one has ever witnessed.
Grief these past 10 months has affected me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I was never one to say "why me?" and neither was Mom, but I often find myself saying "what more can I take?" Now, becoming my Dad's full time care-giver, assuming all the responsibilities for a home, and somehow trying to create a sense of normal and routine in a world that to us is anything but has been exhausting. Grief and loss at some point in our lives finds us all. Grief doesn't end a few days after a funeral. Grief of a close person comes in waves, like a rough Pacific storm. It is messy, unwelcome, -- a guest constantly returning. I don't believe we get past grief or loss, but we somehow manage to work through it. For me, it isn't just about existing alongside grief, but rather growing from it. With it. It isn't leaving, and I don't have a choice in that matter. I remember Mom through the routines of life: the garden, a familiar old recipe, a chipped ceramic decoration, or a piece of crochet left incomplete. It has been the most insignificant life moments that often have surprised me with a rush of memories and feeling. A few months back, at the Dollarama, I grabbed a chocolate bar, and without thinking grabbed Mom's favorite, too. Who knew a Crunchie bar could cause a melt down at the dollar store?
When I go into the garden and I am working away, it brings a sense of familiarity and routine in a time of my life where everything else has been completely torn away and upset. It's a place where I think of Mom at a different time -- when she wasn't sick. This year, I have invested significantly in expanding with new plants in new beds, with a new fence, and much of this has been a tribute to her. As messy and unpredictable as a garden can be, it somehow has given me back some sense of control. While grief was not invited, and sadness not something I had hoped for, just being in that space and letting the emotions come and go has been helpful for me. Oftentimes I will have music streaming that reminds me of Mom and my Grandparents. It's a place where I let the tears fall, and I am not too worried about looking like I've just been through hell and back, because the truth is, that's exactly what it feels like I have done.
Last May, on a day Mom was feeling "OK" after chemo, I took a photo of her in front of a large white clematis. We had never intended it would be used for her funeral brochure but that is exactly what happened. She looked tired, thin, but somehow peaceful. A few days after Mom died, I ventured out into the real world and found and brought home an angel sculpture. The angel sat on Mom's hutch throughout the winter and when Spring came, I moved her outside in front of the clematis, in the spot where she once posed for that photo. I surrounded the angel with Mom's Zinnias and Dahlias, and she seems at peace in the garden, just how I wish to imagine Mom is.
Floral headpiece: Lisa Glover Floral Design
"It Won't Rain Always". Mom's anthem during her illness. I had a plaque made in the garden to honour Mom with those words, however, sometimes it feels like it will always rain. But whether we know it or not at the time, the sun will always shine again. For now, standing in the rain is what my life looks like, day in, and day out -- but with rain, comes flowers.
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Thank you so much to Bradley for sharing his story and the memory of his beautiful mom, Debbie Mae Glenda Gionet. Thank you so much to Lisa Glover Floral Design for the headpiece and floral arrangement shown in Bradley's hands. If you or someone you know could use support with grief you're not alone - resources are available through Chilliwack Hospice Society: https://www.chilliwackhospice.org
Photos by Sarah Sovereign, narrative photographer.
See the photo essay in full below.
