Tending to the Roots

After my youngest son Charlie’s death in July 2022, I had a hard time keeping the plants in my home alive. I had a hard time keeping myself alive.

A part of me definitely died with Charlie but it was when my favorite orchid stopped growing that I really began to worry. Its leaves had yellowed and then turned downward, there was no more new growth.

Did I need to water it more? Both the plant and myself were dehydrated. The juiciness of life had drained from us. I wondered, Was my own sadness killing us both? For sure, both the plants and I needed more light.

Here’s the bigger issue…that orchid was the last present all four of my children gave me together as a birthday gift in February 2022. Five months later Charlie died. If you read the autopsy report it says accidental overdose but parts of Charlie’s spirit started to die long before that autopsy report. He was the youngest of my four children and by the time he was four I was divorced from his father. Charlie was surrounded by love and family until he wasn’t. There were frequent moves and then his dad had three more children with two more women including Charlie’s longtime babysitter. He went from being the youngest to being in between more than just old and new siblings. I was off doing humanitarian work in Zimbabwe, trying to save other children not understanding that I had one at home that was feeling lost. I think both of us felt abandoned.

Charlie, age 16. A year before he moved to California

Charlie moved from Indiana to California when he was seventeen and then I followed several years later after the birth of his first child when he was twenty-two. Five years later, he was dead. What many don’t know is how hard he fought to reconnect with family in those last months. What many don’t know is in the weeks before his death, he detoxed on his own. He was trying so hard to come back to life, but new growth can’t happen without being rooted—and Charlie was alone. When you're alone it can be hard to find the light.

After his death, I cut the blooming stems from my birthday orchid to offer to Charlie’s body before he was cremated. His partner, Harley, and I did a ceremony where we blessed him with messages of love and gratitude for the gift of his life and for the gift of their two daughters, Sunny and Ray. With each blessing we offered flower petals until his head and torso were covered with blooms. That was the last time I saw my son’s body. He looked like a bouquet of love watered with our tears.

This past May, when I moved from my northern California home of seven years, I left all my plants at Harley’s house until I found a new home. Well, I left all the plants but one… I took the frail orchid with me on the seven hour road trip to LA where I was based for a few weeks between homes. It reminded me of a scene from my friend Sam White’s stunning book The Ancestors’ Garden, when she took a spider plant on a ten hour road trip after the death of her older sister, Patti. Sam’s husband at the time said he was too busy to go with her so she stuck the spider plant in the car with her so she’d have company.

“It was then morning, and I told my husband Bob we should get on the road. We needed to drive north to be there for Patti. I was going to keep my promise and say the Rosary over her body for the next three days.

Bob said no. “I have to stay here and run the shop.”

I was hurt and I was pissed, but I decided to not waste one moment on him. I didn’t want to drive alone. My dog had died the month before. I needed company and support. I grabbed the candle, still burning, and put it in the cup holder of the car, and then I grabbed a plant as my companion for the ten-hour trip. What was I thinking?

It was a spider plant with little baby shoots coming off it from a Lowe’s throwaway sale (only twenty-five cents) that I bought and then brought back to life. Now the plant was going to support me on the roadtrip to let my sister go.

It was during the pandemic and the highways were wide fucking open and I made it to Patti’s in record time. Me, the spider plant, and the light.

Excerpt from The Ancestors’ Garden by Sandra Sam White

Do you have a plant or place in nature you reach for? A place you feel rooted even during challenging times?

In July, when I moved into a new home I bought two orchids to sit like bookends on each side of the vulnerable one because plants, like people, heal and grow better in community. My birthday orchid has not come back to life. Perhaps its roots have experienced too much disconnection to feel safe and to remember it knows how to grow.

I haven’t met my neighbors yet but I have met the lake and the trees and the wildflowers that are on my daily walk. And I’m doing my best to stay hydrated so I can begin to take root—and start growing towards the light again.

About a month after I moved into my home, I got a package in the mail from my friend Sam. It was a planter from her garden with sprouts from seeds I had sent to her after the release of her newest book The After Light about the death of her daughter Kaleigh in 2023. Recently, a sprig of the spider plant that had kept her company on her road trip also bloomed in the planter. It was a surprise to both of us. Maybe the unseen roots that connect us in this life are also the ones that connect us in the next one—and all of them need to be tended.

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