Dark & Bitter – The Garden

Tags

bitter, death, depression, fiction, haunted, mental illness

This story was inspired by a poem written by a friend of mine. I’m including it here with his permission, although he has asked to remain anonymous.

The Garden
I plant my garden in the cold of the winter
Seeds of depression is what I’ve sown
You know there’s nothing left to live for
Since you’ve gone, sadness is all I’ve known

C’mon and grow
Little seeds grow
Take me down and torture me
Swallow me then slowly let me go
C’mon little seeds grow

_______________________________________

She left him in the spring. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been as bad if she had left in the fall or winter. But she left in the spring and his heart died. All the things that brought him joy turned to ashes. Especially his garden.

He tried. He planted his seeds, watched as they sprouted and then died. What little hope he held of finding something to sustain him until his heart healed died with them. He was barren as that plot of land.

He had nightmares every night. He would wake gasping and screaming, certain his heart would explode out of his chest. On some nights, he would wake from those horrific dreams to find one or two small dark seeds on her pillow. The first time, he wasn’t sure what they were and threw them away. The gardener in him recognized them the second time. He carefully scooped them into an envelope. They multiplied quickly.

The neighbors talked. They knew she had left, although they didn’t know why. They saw his spectacular garden lay abandoned. They heard his screams in the middle of the night. They talked, but the talk faded as spring turned to summer and then summer to fall.

No one thought it odd when they saw him working in the garden that fall. They were sure he was simply preparing the empty beds for winter and the next year would see a return to the abundance of produce he had grown in years past.

No one saw him on his knees in the rows the next new moon, carefully planting small, dark seeds in the dark of the night. No one saw the sad smile as he stood surveying the neat hills just before dawn.

They saw the black vines that began emerging from the soil a few days later. They assumed he had tried to plant a winter crop and it had failed just as spectacularly as his efforts the previous springs’ had. They shook their heads and discussed how sad it was that he seemed to have lost his green thumb at the same time he had lost his love.

He watched the black vines growing and felt a strange kind of peace. They grew and he attended to tidying his life. Every night, before he went to bed, he walked out to his garden and carefully tended the rows. The vines thickened and seemed to speak to him in the silence of the night.

It had been three months since he had planted those small, dark seeds. He stood, leaning on the hoe he had used to clear the snow from the rows. The vines were whispering again, using her beautiful clear voice. He listened, nodding here and there. He stood up straight, the hoe falling to the ground. He was still for just a moment before reaching for his hat, bending to place it carefully next to the tool. There was a smile on his face as he straightened. He walked to the center of the garden, careful to not step on the vines that were stirring, reaching out to touch his feet and lower legs as he passed them.

He stopped. A final glance at the dark sky, he carefully lowered himself to the cold ground. He lay on his back, crossing his arms over his chest. The plants reached out to him, tendrils and leaves softly caressing him before slowly extending to reach over his body. They took their time enfolding him, wrapping him securely in their darkness. Roots stirred beneath the surface, creating a void that he began to sink into. He did not struggle. His eyes were closed, and he whispered her name as he was swallowed.

Some Bitter – Haunted

Tags

death, depression, haunted, mental illness, mother

She has been dead for 26 days, and I am haunted. Not by her ghost. It couldn’t be that easy. I know how to deal with a vengeful spirit. No, I’m haunted by her apartment and the way it smelled.

Weird, right? Why should an apartment I’d never set foot in before three weeks ago be haunting me? I guess it isn’t really the actual apartment, but everything it represents, and everything I tried to forget, and now can’t stop thinking about.

My mother was a hoarder. She was mentally ill. She suffered from depression for possibly her entire life. She was emotionally and mentally abused as a child. Sexually as well. Add in my narcissistic bully of a father, and she never stood a chance. Mental illness was not something anyone talked about, so she never got treatment.

Her depression manifested as fatigue, disinterest in life in general, mood swings, and hoarding. I remember going upstairs into the house we lived in before we moved to Oregon, and one room was entirely full of old clothes of mine and my brother’s. Baby clothes. They were covered in cat feces and urine, but she cried at having to get rid of them. I remember my parents fighting about that.

After we moved, first to Oregon, then Wyoming, her illness manifested in not cleaning the house. Dishes and laundry piled up. In later years, she loved to tease me about washing the dishes with cold water. The reason I washed dishes with cold water as a teenager was simple. Every dish and pan in the house would be dirty, and it would be my brother and I’s job to wash them. The hot water heater only lasted so long. So yeah, I ended up using cold water to finish. But she never remembered it that way. Because she wasn’t sick, everyone just hated her.

Walking into her apartment was a shock. I expected it to be dirty, and it was. But then again, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I actually told my husband and my brother on the phone that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The smell was there though. That smell is ingrained in my DNA. Stale cigarette smoke. Spoiled food and mold. Dirt. Dust. Animal waste. Dirty laundry. But the apartment wasn’t as dirty as it should have been to smell that bad. Then we started opening closets.

Every closet was full of garbage. Bags of garbage. Every kitchen cupboard and drawer was full of dirty dishes and pans. Empty cans of Febreeze all over the apartment. Overflowing trash in the kitchen and bathroom. Expired food all over the place. The bedroom and bathroom were full of dirty laundry. The thing about the trash? The garbage chute was less than eight feet from her front door. She only had to walk across a hallway to get rid of the it.

Every day since then, that apartment flashes through my brain multiple times a day. That smell that haunted my childhood. Can you be haunted by a place and a smell? I guess you can. It didn’t occur to me until a few years ago that I spent my childhood years smelling like that. Like cigarette smoke, old garbage, mold, pot smoke. No wonder the assistant principal of my high school searched my locker at least once a week for three years. I’m sure he thought I was smuggling cigarettes or pot to school. What a disappointment it must have been that he only found notebooks of my writing, mixed tapes, and library books.

There are four boxes of my mother’s things in my guest bedroom right now. Most of them are items that can be easily cleaned. There is an afghan and two quilts as well however. They are saturated with that smell. I can’t bring myself to open them yet. I tell myself every day that I need to open those boxes, get those things in the wash with every cleaner known to mankind, and get that smell gone. Every day I find a reason not to do it. I wish her ghost had decided to haunt me instead.