Jeff's Memorial Garden

Jeff’s Memorial Garden

Where do I start?  Jeff has been gone nearly 18 months…18 months!  I am still alive, although there are many days where I still feel dead, I am most definitely alive.  Have I helped anyone by blogging?  Probably not.  It was what I set out to do…help someone in their grief…but now, it doesn’t matter anymore.  It really doesn’t matter.   I do believe it helps me when I write about my own thoughts, and about my own emotions.  My emotions…these emotions that move like the wind, can at times set me back on my heels at the blink of an eye.  I think I can honestly say there is not a thought I have where I am not reminded of Jeff, perhaps because he was my sounding board, my strength, my confidant, and my ‘Go To’ person.  He was the man I went to for all my questions. I trusted he always had my best interest at heart.  Jeff was my life and I didn’t even know it…and he will always be in my thoughts.

I have been working on Jeff’s Memorial Garden…this has proven to be a monumental task for me.  I was initially shooting for mid-June of this year…but due to circumstances out of my hands…it has not, I have not yet finished it.  This is one reason I rarely ask for help from family and friends.  One disappointment after another has set me back…after which I guess I just lost focus.  But I am moving forward…as I was working out there this morning…Jeff was on my mind.  How could he not be on my mind, his birthday is tomorrow September 2^nd. 

This will be the second birthday without Jeff here.  I am alone here.  As I was working this weekend tears were flowing.  At one point today I was laying 4 x 4 wooden beams along the edges of the Memorial Garden…I said aloud, “I am not sure if I can do this Doob.”  And instantly I heard the rattling of a branch.  I immediately look up to see a small branch shaking right next to Jeff’s bench.  A small branch was shaking as I looked at it…shaking on the ground! I swear, it was as though Jeff was saying, “Don’t give up Mother…you can do it.”  How many times did my son encourage me just as I was about to give up on something?  “You can do it Mom.”  I must have heard those words a thousand times before from him.  He was always there to encourage me.  So today when I was down, tired, and ready to give up on his Memorial Garden…I really feel he was here to encourage me.   I was at wits end, tired, dirty, missing my son, and crying when the branch started to shake…my eyes were blinking away tears while I watched this little branch shaking on the ground next to his bench.  There was no wind to shake the branch…yet it was there shaking.  “Ok baby,” I said.  “I guess in a sense this is a Memorial for you, a Monument, so I guess it should be a monumental undertaking.”  I could almost hear Jeff saying, “Oh really.”

This is Jeff, or rather this was Jeff…always encouraging me.  When Steve died it was Jeff who encouraged me to finish college.  I was a month out from my bachelor degree.  I was taking 17 credits that last semester.  Finals were coming up, and I was mourning Steve.  Jeff was my lifeline, on the phone.  “You can do it Mom.  You already know everything.  Just take these last five tests and then you will be done.  You can do it Mom,” Jeff said on the other end of the phone.  That last week of classes I had five finals.  Each of my professors encouraged me to take an ‘Incomplete’ in their classes and take the test later.  If I had taken the incomplete I would have had a year to take the finals.  My son encouraged me to just take the finals and get it over with.  “You can do it Mom.  Dad wouldn’t want you to quit school just because of him.  Take your finals, you can do it.  Don’t worry about trying to get an A, just do the best you can.” 

I passed all five finals, my grades suffered a little…but I passed. 

 

That very week I found myself walking across the stage to accept my degree.  I could hear my family cheering me on as I walked across the stage.  I remember feeling an enormous sense of pride and at the same time I couldn’t help but feel sad about the whole thing.  My Steve had died a month prior, and was not here to watch me graduate.  Steve was so very proud of me…of my accomplishments, yet as God would have it…Steve was not around to celebrate my graduation.  I was surrounded by family and friends that day.  Jeff made the trek from Colorado with his family to celebrate…but mostly to help me through this day, and countless days thereafter.  It was Jeff who encouraged me to continue my education in the Master’s program.  It was he whom I turned to to edit my papers.  It is he whom I turn to even now when I am having a bad day.

So although I could hardly believe my eyes…it was still not a surprise to me that that little branch was shaking.  It was through my tears that I looked at this branch.  The leaves on it shaking as though someone was physically shaking it.  There have been too many of these phenomenon’s that have happened to me for me not to believe…you know in the ‘hear-after.’  First with Steve…and now with Jeff.  I know in my heart Jeff was telling me…encouraging me, just as he had countless times before, to keep going forward on his garden.  Quite honestly it is not just about his ‘Garden’ so much as it was him pushing me to just move forward.  I know that, with all that I am, I believe in spirits after death…I believe Jeff was there with me, watching me as I worked.  Encouraging me to keep moving.  Jeff, was my life.  I suppose in some ways he will always be my life.  No, he may no longer be in my life…not in my physical world…but he is always here with me.  This is something I have come to accept.  My life is nothing like it was 18 months ago…but I am still hanging on.  Jeff is still here helping me through these emotions.  He has given me strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  He has helped me maneuver some of the roughest bridges I will ever cross.   I guess I am not ready to let go…as long as I feel I need Jeff…he will be here with me.  This is what I have come to believe…this is all I can accept for now.  A year from now things may be different…I may feel different…but for now this really is all I can accept.  My son was a man among men.  A quiet man who rarely spoke aloud to people he didn’t know.  But quiet or not, when he was in a room, everyone knew his presence was in the room. 

My hope is to finish this Memorial Garden…I stopped giving myself a deadline.  It is nowhere near done, but already it is my place of refuge.  I find myself sitting there time and again when I am feeling alone.  This garden, this memorial I am making for my son is a tribute that shows my love…my everlasting love for my son.  It is the beginnings of a beautiful garden, it has the beginnings of a place for many years of happiness.