My Grief Thumb

My mother passed away on Christmas in 2022. She was my nucleus, an extraordinary person who filled our lives with so much love. The magnitude of this loss shattered me.

She had many talents, including an incredible green thumb. She could bring anything back to life. I, on the other hand, did not share her botanical magic — every plant I brought into my New York City apartment died.

Mom left behind a magical garden filled with vibrant rose bushes, lilies, daffodils, black-eyed Susans, and the sweetest cherry tomatoes. She also had a beautiful family of indoor plants with some curious names: crown of thorns, devil’s ivy, flaming Katy. I began learning about their needs, trying to tend to them as she had despite my less than stellar history with houseplants.

Suddenly, right after Mom’s burial, a beautiful purple shamrock plant she’d had for years started to die. While purple shamrocks can sometimes go dormant at different times of the year, this plant — away from the cold, resting on the coffee table — had been doing well and thriving. Yet, virtually overnight, its once bright purple leaves began rotting, its lifeless stems drooping almost to the floor.

With its sudden demise, it was as if the plant, like me, were mourning Mom.

It resembled how I felt inside — sad and weary. I placed it on one of our living room windowsills that had just the right amount of sunlight and shade and diligently tried to save it. It seemed an extension of my mother, and I just couldn’t bear to lose another thing connected to her.

I named the plant Frida.

I followed expert advice on how to care for her — watering, pruning, and repotting — but nothing seemed to help Frida. Each day more of her leaves died off, until none were left.

Most days, grief consumed me. I vacillated between two very different worlds: the one I had known my whole life

with my mother in it; the other a cold, fractured place forcing me to live without her. Early mornings and nighttime were the worst. The busyness of the day sometimes kept me going, but after everyone was asleep, the darkness crept back in, wrapping its coils around my neck, serpent-like, as I struggled to breathe.

Many nights, I stared out my bedroom window, watching the city go on. Memories played on a loop in my head: the time I had serious complications from my pregnancy and my mother never left my side; the sweet smell of her house after she baked her exceptional apple pie; the sound of her voice reading bedtime stories to her grandchildren; family dinners at her amazing restaurant. It just didn’t seem possible to be without her.

Silly as it may sound, I started talking to Frida each day, watering her, tending to her — narrating my grief to lifeless soil in a pot.

My mother and I had never gone to bed without a good night call. Now, I slept with her sapphire ring on a necklace, close to my heart, and often wished for her to send me a sign. “Just let me know that you are OK and that you are still around us,” I asked each night.

As winter months dragged on, my heartbreak grew. I had never gone that long without talking to Mom. Then, one particularly cold and rainy morning, as I lay in bed buried under my comforter, my husband began excitedly yelling from the living room, “Come see this!” I ran to the windowsill and there it was: the tiniest, barely-there green stem starting to peek through Frida’s soil.

Something was happening.

Soon after, several green stems with beautiful, colorful leaves sprouted, and more quickly followed. Frida was returning.

Maybe Mom was watching after all.

And with each stem that peeked through, I felt my sense of hope growing.