In The Worst Year of My Life I Created A Happiness All My Own

Snip. "I can't believe your mom is letting you make such a mess in her kitchen," he said, from his chair in the sun across the room. Snip. I cried the first time she taught me how to do it right. Snip. I do it again, tonight, and all is quiet.

It was the week after they told me the bad news that I bought the first one, my eyes still red-rimmed even after seven days. Seven days, like creating the world, only it was measured in my changed reality. It was the first time I felt a spark of, well, anything, since they'd told me. A spark of hope, perhaps, although that sounds too poetic. There was nothing poetic about it. More gritty, like dirt under your fingernails. A spark of something that wouldn't die, maybe? A chance to keep something alive, like I couldn't do for him.

The second one found its way into my hands only weeks later. They always say that before you have children you should be able to keep a pet alive. Before a pet, a plant. Keep alive. Keep alive. Keep alive. Stay alive. The mantra of my thoughts. The wishes it hurt too much to say aloud. The helplessness I poured into my new beginnings.

The springs of green, the smell of wet dirt as I religiously watered them, as if praying to them for a miracle.

Last month I sat at the kitchen table and began the process of taking care of the plants I had so frantically, desperately collected in the months he'd been sick. He sat in the sun, commenting - or, more accurately, wise-cracking - on all I did, while my mother patiently let me cover her beautiful island with dirt and roots and cuttings.

Cuttings. She taught me that day the importance of them. I cried as I made the first cut, scissors meeting the life I'd been hoarding. By then I had more plants than room for them, pot saucers replaced by our dining dishes, bookcases turned greenhouses. I sat down that day and promised to learn how to care for them, these plants that had collected without much conscious thought, some of them browning, others leggy and overgrown, others root-bound, others all three. For eight long months interspersed with chemo trips, longer hugs, and conversations too painful to have, these plants had gathered: life in the face of death. But nothing had been created...not yet.

You are probably wondering how this story got mixed up in all the creative ones. You see no creating yet, nor very much happiness. But here is where you are wrong, for life is the ultimate creativity, and happiness is the strongest and most poignant when mixed with the deepest of sadness.

I lost my father, my Papa, two weeks ago. After ten months with terminal cancer. After denial. After realizing that watching him cry hurt more than all the tears I could ever let fall. After feeling my heart break and thinking that was the last time, only to have it break again until I wanted to beg it to shatter. I faced death this year, and lost the first great love of a daughter's life - her father - before my twenty-sixth birthday. But in the middle of it all I found it, through my father's example, through the way I woke up again each day, watered my plants, and chose life, even as I watched my father's being cut short.

Cuttings. I said I cried. I did that day, when my mother told me in a frustrated tone (it was possible I hadn't listened the first few times she suggested it) that for my plants to grow they needed to be pruned. I looked at my great pink plant, far outgrown it's small pot, reaching for the sun, and cried as I cut the first long, magnificent branch. "It will help it fill out," my mother said. I tried to believe her. I mourned as I cut the browning leaves too, feeling as if I had failed that they had appeared at all. Perhaps I could bring them back, I asked. She shook her head at me. We cannot turn back time. We cannot bring back the dead to life.

Did you know that the plant sends nutrients and water to the branches that are already dead, losing much needed resources in the process, until they are cut off? Did you know that long branches become selfish, starving their smaller siblings unless they are brought back down to size? Did you know that life can only exist when paired with death?

I cut. And then I cut some more. I cut and started to see smaller branches reach for the sun. I cut and read about how cuttings can be placed in water and may grow new roots. I cut and watched the brown fall away and felt like I could take my first full breath.

Learning how to cut, how to use scissors, not to limit life, but encourage it, shape it, care for it, has brought me more than happiness. Happiness, yes, as I learned how to multiply my favourite plant, my precious peace lily, by splitting it's core apart to create tiny ones. Happiness, yes, as I un-potted it only to hold the whole root system of this plant in my hands. Happiness, yes, as I untangled it's roots like hair and found three baby peace lilies to join our family. Happiness, yes, as I felt that I held a living heart in my hands.

Happiness, yes as my plants flower, one by one, under my tender-loving-care. Happiness, yes, as life springs up in every inch of my rooms. Happiness, yes, when the seeds I'd planted sprouted into little sprigs of pure green hope. Happiness, yes, as watering my plants each day reminds me to care for myself. Happiness, yes, as I am able to be a partner with the work of life.

But more than happiness. Understanding. Understanding that cutting is what made it all possible. Understanding that for life to flourish loss must accompany it. Understanding that it is only in the sadness of death that we can experience the fullness of life. Understanding that I am speaking in cliques and hope that you understand me regardless. Sometimes cliques are the only words that we can find, when the rest is too much to say.

When my father died he left me with his burning desire to keep living. He very much did not want to die. He never, not for one day, stopped dreaming of what he'd do next. Along the way I started to, too. Along the way, I picked up his love of life. Along the way I picked up a new happiness, one embedded as deep in the soil as my new friends: the joy of dirt under my fingernails, mud on my cheek, green promises of tomorrow and the peace that comes with a relationship with nature, one that understands that cutting comes along with growth.

Happiness is not always giddy, with a big smile and lots of cheer. It can be as simple as the uplift in your spirits on a day clouded with sorrows. Or the joys of appreciating life while we have it, like the taste of good chocolate. Or the hint of fresh green in the corner of your eye, in a room that seemed to be dark. Happiness is life, continuing, even in the face of death.

I did not create these plants, but, with my scissors, I help create their futures, and the paths through the dirt and air that they will take. I created their environment, and allowed them to create mine. I created their stories, and how their stories affected me, my mother, our home. I created a new narrative much like we create our own paths, in partnership with the ways life goes outside of our control. I did not plan for my Papa to die this year. None of us planned to be locked inside since 2020. But didn't we all find another small way to smile today?

In the worst year of my life, I found happiness in being partnered with it, with life, with the fact that life ends in death, with the fact that, until death, life does not end. With the fact that, in death, it still hasn't.

It begins, again.

I smiled. I planted that.