Everything and everyone dies

sooner or later, regardless of how much you pray or wish against it. As you age, the deaths become more frequent. I was also going to say harder to deal with but I'm not sure that's true.

My first memory of death happened when I was a toddler and it was not a person; it was a chicken. My parents decided to raise chickens and the day came when it was time to butcher one of them. I'm pretty sure that it happened before I even knew what death meant. All I knew was that the whole family was there to watch as my dad held an ax high over a chickens head, which was flung over a stump (of course), and he couldn't go through with it. My grandmother had to grab the ax from his hand, swearing the whole time, and whack its head off. The next thing I knew, a headless chicken came running across the yard right to me. No matter where I ran or how much I screamed, and boy, did I scream, it would not untangle from my legs. I remember the blood all over me and the terror I felt. I remember some people laughing and others trying to help. I also remember running by the head laying by that stump and seeing it blink. That death was very hard for me to deal with and I am sure that it played a part in me becoming a vegetarian later in life.

Lots of deaths have happened since then and each one has burnt a permanent memory into my brain. Watching my pet cat flipping around after get getting hit by a car. Hearing that an old boyfriend was murdered and left in a drainage ditch. The last look my mother gave me before she fell asleep and never woke up again. The sound of the fading heart monitor and my cousins words of of love to his mother as we each held a hand at her bedside watching her die. He trying to assure her it was ok to let go, even though we didn't believe it.

This month I experienced another death. Not a person thankfully, but my grand old octopus of a mulberry tree. The spring freeze predictor I have written about here in previous posts. A cancer had invaded it a few years ago and slowly, trunk by trunk, it began to die. I woke a few weeks ago to find that its last three branches had dropped withing inches of the ground. I'm sure that my neighbor is singing to the heavens because the birds will no longer be able to eat the delicious berries and leave those horrible and permanent purple stains on her car or cement driveway.

I am not going to tell her that I plan to plant another to take its place as soon as I can. How else will I know when it is safe to plant my flowers each spring?

So, I had sixteen graves

to take care of this year for Memorial Day. Because of cold weather, I had to wait until the Friday before I could start to deliver/plant flowers.

On Tuesday I was back at the cemeteries covering the flowers I planted and removing the ones I had set out in pots because of frost and freeze warnings. After work on Wednesday, I redelivered and uncovered. I went home, watched the news and was informed that they had miscalculated (imagine that) and the temps would dip below freezing again that night. Geez, I checked at noon and they said a low of 40. Back to the cemeteries I went. Thanks to the gas prices, I lost pretty much all my profits for the year. Grrrrrr. But hey, the flowers survived, the graves look great and that’s the important thing, right?

A little off topic but in my front yard is an enormous Mulberry tree that my grandmother planted. I can remember her telling me to never, ever plant anything in the spring until the leaves sprout on that tree. She said that Mulberry trees know when the last frost of the year is going to be so if you see leaves on them you can safely plant even if the calendar says it's too early. Guess what? So far, that tree has never been wrong. I checked it yesterday and could not find a single tiny green leaf. I planned to plant my garden this weekend but if I don’t see any leaves by then I will definitely wait.