Just a plant

“Brian, I don’t know how to break this to you, but I think your plant is dead.”

That was from my sister, Nicole, who was visiting from New Jersey last week about the apparently very dead peace lily sitting on the window ledge in my basement.

In full disclosure, I have never pretended to have any sort of a green thumb. Despite my best intentions and plans every spring, my gardening tactics could best be described as Darwinian survival of the fittest. Likewise, my houseplants suffer similarly in a state of benign neglect. I make a point of not purchasing plants. I try to politely decline when well-meaning acquaintances have attempted to gift me with plants.

I don’t want to appear rude as rejecting their wellmeaning offers, but giving me a houseplant to take care of is basically giving it a death sentence. This also leaves me in a lurch when they ask me about the plant at some point in the future, usually with a story about how they spent 5 hours a day over the course of three months nursing a cutting into the vibrant, healthy plant they gave me, which I then forgot to water during a particularly busy week and which crumbled into dust when I bumped the pot.

In this case, the peace lily was sent to me when my mom died in June 2020. The people who sent it to me were well-meaning in their intentions and I appreciated their thoughtfulness. I tried to keep the plant alive. I really did, but to be honest, the plant kind of depressed me.

Every time I looked at it, I remembered my mom was no longer around. At the advice of a friend, I tried talking to it as a stand in for my mom to see if that helped. I am not sure what kind of plants this friend typically talks to, but my peace lily was not a very stirring conversationalist. I ended up actually feeling more guilty when I would forget to water it for a week. I would then try to overcompensate and over water the plant after carefully removing the dead foliage. I knew it would not end well.

Getting someone a live plant for a funeral of a loved one is the moral equivalent of saying, “Sorry your mom died, here have a puppy.”

Yeah you have to care for it and and it will be around for a long time, and yeah, every time you look at it you will be reminded of your loss like ripping the scab off an old wound or restubbing your toe. And yes, you will feel incredible guilt when you realize that you are incompetent at taking care of it and its ongoing care and feeding turns you into a bitter shell of a person filled with festering resentment at the well-meaning, but misguided person who sent it to you. Those things aside, it is otherwise a well-intentioned gesture.

While funeral flower arrangements do help bring brightness and color to those suffering from a loss, at best they should have the average longevity of a goldfi sh won at the county fair. Ideally by the time the petals begin to drop and it is time to send them to the compost heap, the flowers will have served their purpose of reminding you that all things wonderful and beautiful in this world are fleeting and that the memories of that beauty are the things that live on. It is in our memories that people are young and vibrant and how they were at their prime rather than the wilted mess they became.

Everyone grieves differently. There may be some who actually find peace lilies and similar funeral go-to potted plants to be calming and enjoyable. Then again those people are probably not wracked with guilt about the many, many innocent plants they have murdered over the years, like so many memories gone dim with the passing of time.

I should really do something with the withered brown remains of the dead plant on my windowsill. It is time to clean it up and move on.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.