Pruning the stone garden is a phrase that washed over me in hypnopompia - that time when our minds are slipping back into reality after slumber. My head on the pillow, my mind in the clouds, those words kept a continual loop while I tried to decide if I should get up to write them down or repeat them often enough so I'd remember them later.
They also confused me. What the hell does "pruning the stone garden" mean? I tried to make sense of it as images of a graveyard came into view as though I were a passenger looking out the window of a slow moving car. I wondered, "Is a stone garden a sea of headstones in a cemetery?" It may be, but I knew that didn't tell the whole story.
I woke up intrigued by the phrase. I may not be clear on the meaning, but I certainly appreciate the way the words and images play together. Someone told me it could mean futility. That makes sense too.
I do know that it is twisted in with the concepts of life, loss, death, grief, and longing. I continue to struggle with the reality of a life without my mom. It is constantly on the forefront of my mind as I journey on in this diminished state. I can sometimes talk myself into the calmness of believing she is not gone. In those moments, I shift back into who I was for a spell. But, that's not reality and I'm not crazy enough to live in that delusion.
Perhaps pruning the stone garden means snipping away the hard things to make what is here, what I'm left with, more beautiful. It may mean I need to deal with my shit and appreciate what I've been given in the past and all that I still have.
What do you think?
2 comments:
I think your love for your mom is reason enough to believe we are united in the next place, which some call the afterlife, but which may be more real than this life, you never know. I only know that such love does not disappear into the ether, it draws us together, again and again, through what we understand as time. (You asked!)
And reading your words brought the tears. My heart agrees with you. Thank you.
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