Sacred Sorrow

I was on my knees, in the garden. If she was a person, we would have been forehead to forehead, and I would be whispering my sorry into her skin.

But she was not a person.

She was a plant.

One that was alive before I left for twelve days of holidaying, and dry as a crisp when I arrived home.

I could have cried. I’d planted her and one other, just before Christmas, forgetting that we’d be going away and there’d be no one home to water them. I thought about them often while we were gone, just hoping. They both died. It was too long in such dry hot conditions.

In the moment I sat with her whispering ‘sorry’, I felt her. It was a sacred sorrow in the air, beautiful and sad, slow and soothing, one that only a few years ago I wouldn’t have been able to feel.

There are many who would laugh at me for loving, connecting and understanding nature as deeply as I do. To me, everything is alive, and I try to treat all the living beings in my care with as much love as I would a human.

It is my way, to love those who cannot speak for themselves.

It is a beautiful life of the deepest connection.

It is pure. And it is right, for me.