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Bulb-ness – and how it makes me happy when the situation isn’t!
So, Rich and I have been losing a lot of friends lately.
Not as in, they’re giving up on being our friends. As in, a lot of people we know and care about have actually died recently. Not to put too fine a point on it.
I’m 59 and he’s 63, and I wouldn’t have thought it would start happening to us this early. Isn’t it early? It feels early…
But this is what is happening. We went to four funerals last year. I had to wheel Rich into the haberdashers to get him a decent dark jacket and a few white shirts that we keep in packets until needed, so they won’t go all crushed and disrespectful-looking. And dark shoes. Because he cannot go on wearing brown shoes with his black trousers. Just – no.
And then my daughter sent me a spotify link to a song called “The End of Everything” by Noah Cyrus. Cheery little ditty. First line is “Everyone you love is going to die.”
Really??? Come on!!
But I listened to it – and it was so shocking. I thought – “She can’t say that!”
But of course she can. She did. Sang it, in fact. Over and over. Shocked me every time. Because the thing is – it’s true.
Ooooh – run your tongue over that like a sore tooth. You can’t get rid of it. It is, actually, a fact.
Everyone you love is going to die some day. Including you.
And I think that the real question that raises is — Okay, so what do we do about that? How do you find meaning in a world where everyone you love is going to die?
How can it not just render us all speechless with depression? What is the POINT?
And as I looked around for an answer, the only thing that occurred to me as the source of a possible answer, was in the garden. The garden recurs. The garden returns. And yes, I know that people aren’t plants. But we’ve got to start somewhere.
So here’s my swing at it – BULB-NESS.
Here’s what I mean by that. Every autumn, I plant layered tulip and crocus bulbs in the ten containers around the farmyard, the 13 containers up around the factory and the 5 containers back by my mum’s cottage. I do this every year.
I love it. Although it’s a lot of work, and requires a lot of compost and tulip bulbs. Because here’s the thing about tulips – the really fabulous, gorgeous ones? They don’t come back every year. You have to tip them out, compost the spent ones and start all over. So it’s expensive. And time consuming. And it keeps me outside, on my knees, for a long period of time in November when the weather is usually pants, and to be completely honest I’d rather be inside, with my feet up in front of the fire.
But I do it every year, with the same sensation with which I would bury treasure for someone I love to find. I imagine the delighted surprise when those bulbs break the surface like living jewels. I await the coming of the blooms in spring with the purest, greediest anticipation. I watch the dark surface of the compost for the first green shoot, and get weirdly over-excited when I see it.
I used to plant winter plants as toppers on the pots, but now I don’t – because I want to watch for the first green shoots without having to peer through other plants.
Let’s be honest, I’m a bit OTT obsessive about it.
And then of course I adore seeing all the tulips in full bloom in different colour combinations every year, sprouting and opening and forming magnificent patterns.
Some I cut for the house. Some I leave in the containers. All of them, I enjoy. Until they die, and the whole show is over for another year.
So – I was thinking – do I grieve the loss of each tulip every year? Do I feel sad when one particular flower ages and fades and goes over? Does the death of one particular tulip discourage me from planting again next season?
No, it does not. Because it’s not the individual tulips I love – it’s the BULB-NESS. It’s the pattern of the whole thing – all the tulips. The planting. The waiting. The blooming. The cutting. The dying back. The doing-it-all-again-next-autumn-ness of it. The whole damn cycle.
I don’t plant one tulip forever. I plant bulbness. Every year – there are particular bulbs. Particular blooms. A particular spring. But what I love is the pattern – the recurrence, the archetype, the returning aliveness through form.
The individual bulbs perish.
Bulbness persists.
And for me, that’s what underneath the horrible thought that all of the people I love in the world will, at some point (whether I go before them or after them…) disappear off the face of the earth.
Maybe meaning doesn’t come from permanence.
Maybe meaning comes from participation.
We can’t control outcome. We can’t freeze the field. We can’t prevent change.
But we can choose. We can choose how to show up. How deeply to love. How honestly to speak. What kind of bulbs we plant.
We’re part of something bigger than ourselves – a constantly moving, shifting pattern. If you get attached to permanence, you’re in trouble – because nothing is. Everything changes. Tulips. Neighbourhoods. Civilisations. Even people. Especially people!
But – that doesn’t stop us engaging. We can still participate. We can still be part of the unending kaleidoscope around us. We can still love with fierceness. We can still garden with passion. We can still love each bloom – and each person in our lives – with fierceness and with tenderness. Knowing that they are fragile and impermanent. That doesn’t make them less beautiful, or special.
It makes them more special.
Everyone you love is going to die.
But the pattern – the BULB-NESS – will remain.
And that makes me happy in a funny way – not trying to pretend that everything is permanent. But finding happiness INSIDE the knowledge that it isn’t.
You know?
Hugs,
Shann.x
Founder/Director Chuckling Goat
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