My children had last Monday, the day after Easter, off from school, so they came downtown and bummed lunch off of Chris and me. The day was lovely, and the children were lovelier, so I told them I would leave work and spend the rest of the afternoon with them. As we were riding home together, they asked me what I wanted to do, and I told them that I would like to garden. To my delight, they said that they would be happy to help, so the children, my daughter’s friend, and I puttered in the yard. We weeded and planted, pruned and dug, swept and raked. After a few hours, my daughter and her friend walked to a nearby bakery and bought some cannoli, and the four of us feasted. I left for dance class, and came back, and we all agreed to eat outside, and after the table had been set, I grabbed my camera phone and snapped this picture in the waning light of day:

The picture surprised me. Sure, I could identify the yard — it was clearly mine, I recognized the table, the hot tub, the lights, the birdhouses — yet it did not seem like my yard. As the #1 tender of the back 40, I walk out the back door and see the weeds, the unfinished pergola, the landscaping bags that need to be dragged to the curb. But for a split second, this image allowed me to see the yard as others may see it: inviting, lush, sumptuous, cozy.  I could not believe that it was mine.

I suppose that I should tell you now exactly what happened last Monday since it had a fair hand in driving me home. I have a friend, X, who lives miles away and whom I rarely see. The distance hardly matters: On the rare occasions I see her, it takes all of 10 seconds to reconnect and to resume. (No doubt you know what I mean. There are friends, and then there are friends, and X falls squarely in the friends camp.) A few weeks ago, I had gotten wind that X’s long-time partner, Y, had died. Y was handsome and funny, smart and well-educated — just the type of man that my friend X deserved. He made her happy, which X also deserved.

I never know what to say when people die. I used to try hard to write something meaningful and poignant, something memorable, but as I get older and write more of these notes, I have simply given up, for what is there to say? Grief is so personal, and death is sometimes so senseless, and I find myself writing and deleting, only to start all over again to no avail. So with X, I settled on telling her that I loved her dearly, that a plane or a car could easily carry me to her door, and that I had no idea of what to say other than that. I sent this to X, and I hoped that this would be enough.

X finally responded last Monday by forwarding me something that someone else wrote. Make sure you are sitting down and centered, she said. So I sat and took a deep breath and read an account of what she told a stranger at an Easter gathering the day before: She talked about Y’s death. Y committed suicide. As I read the details, I was inordinately grateful to this stranger who told me a story that was simply too painful for X to tell me. I read the message only once, and I wrote something that I don’t even remember, and I sought comfort in my children. Which took us out to the garden, and with dirt under my fingernails, I tried to process it all.

I have suffered from depression — I think that every thinking person has — and as I dug up clover and pulled out dollar weed, I was so very grateful to be happy and so very sad for X. When I looked at that picture of the yard, the one that I have shown you, it struck me that life presents such a beautiful garden and that sometimes, by circumstance or by virtue of a terribly unpredictable chemical imbalance, all one can see are the weeds. Having seen enough weeds myself, I decided to honor Y’s memory by paying attention to kindness and to beauty.

I will tell you only two stories of things that have happened in the seven days after I read about Y, although I could tell you many more. Chris and I were in the produce section of Publix this weekend when I saw a woman with two small boys, perhaps ages 2 and 4, in a race car buggy. She was talking to a muscled, handsome man about her husband, who was gone. (There are many soldiers in town — she struck me as a military wife, he struck me as a soldier — and I was not certain what the extent of “gone” was, whether deployed or dead.) As the woman spoke to the man, he picked up the boys, one at a time, and enveloped each in a giant bear hug. The boys squealed with delight, clearly enjoying a hug like the hugs that they had received from their father. He had all the time in the world, it seemed, and after tending to both boys, he embraced their mother and turned to look at avocados. By the bananas, the mother asked the boys, “What’s your father’s name?” As their cart rolled off,the older boy shouted, “Bye, Ben!,” and the man waved. And as I plucked a bouquet of hydrangea from the floral section, I heard the older boy ask his mother, “Ben is a very good boy, isn’t he?”

A few nights later, Chris and I saw another show in the Savannah Music Festival: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. (She is terrific, and the Dap Kings are too, and if you love funk and soul and R & B, you should take a listen.) Sharon will be 60 on my daughter’s birthday in May, and she has been battling pancreatic cancer. She mentioned this to tell us why she needed a break every so often and why she was so happy to be performing for us that night. She was so alive, and so energetic, and danced so much — for anyone, much less an almost 60 year-old woman who had just changed cancer medication.

After telling us that she loved to dance, she asked the ladies to join her on stage. So the woman behind me tapped my shoulder and said, “Let’s go.” And from the first row of the balcony, grasping the hand of a stranger in the second row, I ran downstairs. We pushed through the throngs and crawled up on a rail and leapt onto the stage.  I waved to Chris and forgot the crowd and started dancing lights out. The music reminded me of the radio station that I listened to in my room as a child in Moultrie — a station from Opelika, Alabama, where the DJ called himself the Opelika Soul-Psycher, a man who was coming at you with 100,000 watts of soul power. There I was, happy, dancing, feeling both younger and older and altogether alive, enjoying the moment and hoping that it would not end.

So here we are, good people. We live in these beautiful gardens with plenty of weeds. But we have people we love who will help us tend them. We have strangers who will step in to fill a void, who will listen. We have people who will inspire us with their tenacity and perseverance, their talent, their enthusiasm. We have others who will give us a nudge, who will say, “let’s go.” We have moments that will remind us of the past. We have moments that will make us look to the future. We have the present. We have each other.

What else is there to say, other than I love you dearly? I suppose this. Say a little prayer, have a moment of silence, send good thoughts, transmit healing energy — however you say it — for X to find peace, and to honor the memory of Y. Search for beauty. It is there. Ask for help if the weeds overwhelm you. Let yourself go. And live. Live loudly. Live boldly. Live like this is it. Live. Live. Live.

ALC