Tired of Life

The end of a season and understanding death as part of existence

Death is everywhere. There are flies on the windscreen, for a start…

~ Depeche Mode

I began the process of putting down my garden today.

My last two squash have ripened, and are nesting cozily inside now, so it was time to tear out the vines that had snaked all around the yard. My Hidasta beans, like their squash cousins, lingered wanly, a single flower raging against the dying of the light while the rest of the patch withered.

I think about death more than I probably ought to. Both in the abstract, and in the specific. Death of friends. Relatives. Pets. Lovers. Me. But also my little green world, which each day becomes browner.

It is October, and it’s a warm one. No frost in the forecast, which is a rarity here in Minnesota. But as the climate warms, it may become less strange as the years pass. My tomatoes and peppers, and even the heat-loving okra are still creeping along.

But they are not happy. My North Dakotan plants, the dry beans and squash, programmed for even colder winters, eased into decay first. They know death perhaps better than most, for in the northern Great Plains, it comes for you when the winds blow cold out of the Arctic.

Everything in nature has its own timing. Some choose their moment; others fade when they must. Decay, death and all that comes with it are every bit as much a part of life as are birth, growth and happiness.

Indeed, there is a strange happiness in a good death — something many do not get the chance to experience. But it can and does happen.

An aged relative of a friend decided on physician-assisted suicide a few months ago. She was 90 and her body had fallen to bits. Her last years would be dreadful, painful and sad. The way it was relayed to me, her final experience was eerie, like attending your own funeral. But then that might not be a bad thing, after all?

Our bodies decay. That’s also a fact. I do not heal as quickly as I once did. When I restart a weight routine, I often need three rest days after that restart. I used to need just one. My vision is not perfect. My left ear rings from shotgunning and, probably, too many concerts. I have a torn meniscus in my right knee.

Still, as Toby Keith sang, even though I am not as good as I once was, I am as good once as I ever was. That is what all of us in middle age cling to. But that, too, will fade. My Hidatsa beans held on as long as they could, but they simply ran out of steam. We will, too.

Could they have eked out a few more beans? Maybe. I will soon sift through all the beans they gave me, choose the fattest, prettiest among them, and save them to plant next year. The final beans of the year are never the ones I save. They are never as fat or as pretty as those that ripened in their proper time. No, it was kinder to let the vines go. This is why I say I “put down” my garden. I rarely let the White Queen of Winter take it.

I have lived through this several times with beloved pets. Missy the Cat. Big Row. Holly’s sweet gorl Giblet. Most everyone reading this has endured the same trauma. What it really time? Were my actions just? What if they weren’t ready? The fact that we humans have literal powers of life and death over those beings who live with us can come to a punishing point at the moment of death.

I still have not brought another cat into my life. Maybe I will. But it’s been more than two years. Missy’s death hurt. A lot. Even though I knew it was time.

Plants, to me, are a far lighter lift. Most gardeners try to embrace eternal life, most notably planting mums in fall mere weeks before the chill kills them. The reality is that death is all around us all the time, as the Depeche Mode song I quoted above notes. But nowhere is death so profoundly rejoiced than in a garden — especially a northern garden.

In Sacramento, as in California as a whole, nothing need ever die. It’s part of that state’s mythology as the land of eternal youth. With few frosts and no snow, I once picked tomatoes for Christmas, and stinging nettles in January.

I know a few old people who clung to this belief in odd ways, long after their quality of life had deteriorated into a miasma of pain, drugs, immobility, and loneliness. A few had that final project to finish, or a burning desire to see a grandchild graduate or marry. Most simply feared What Comes Next. Understandable. I don’t judge them. Maybe I will be the same when my time comes?

But maybe not. As a Minnesotan now, the idea of eternal life — in the garden and otherwise — feels exhausting. I am ready to say goodnight to my garden. Ready to deal with (or not) the final, unripe peppers and tomatoes struggling to the finish as each day cools. Do I need one more project? Ready to see my garden beds clean and bare, asleep under a blanket of dead maple leaves I pile on to rot all winter, enriching the soil.

A garden reveals that death may be final for a particular plant, but not for the garden as a whole. We will all die. Tomorrow, next year, or in some long-distant season. We will end. But what a gift this life is! Even in ending, we feed our shared world. We’re all compost anyway.

And what is compost but sweet smelling stardust? Stardust that allows new life to carry on afterwards, when the White Queen retreats in spring.