garden, garden photos, gardens, Grief, Loss, Photography, Photos

For the Beauty

Corrie's Mom

“For the Beauty of the Earth” was always a hymn that could calm me.

No matter how I felt at church, or if I was coming out of a nap as a young child during service, this song calmed me. It gave my mind an instant image of nature in every geography. I could pictures oceans, forests, and birds chirping–all places where talking ceased.

It was one of two hymns played at my daughter’s, Corrie, funeral. A bittersweet beauty fills up every chord, and for a moment, it allows you to forget everything that’s wrong.

I cherished those moments …

because we’re going to fall sometimes. Some of us may regress only to find a way back. We may be unforgivable to some, and enlightening to others. We hope to shine a light rather be seen as something dark. In all the chaos of the world, all hope for the feeling of this song.

As a bereaved parent, or for anyone who grieves, a new type of anxiety occurs. I read it on another blog. One of those fears is losing my remaining child. This anxiety and even depression can overtake you.

My son has been my greatest cheerleader, along with my husband in this recent struggle I’ve had in trying to make me laugh. He’s said to me such words of wisdom, “Why do you care what other people think?”

When you fall down, you get back up again, start walking, and put one step in front of the other. The hymn says, “for the love which from our birth/ over and around us lies,” and it causes me to consider everything around me.

So I share the beauty found and created around me during this week.

I’ve added Dahlias and Calla Lilies to the flower area of the Arendelle Garden.
I did a new container, the small one, with pineapple sage, parsley, basil, and cilantro.
I took a picture of the white rose before I cut it from one of my three hybrid tea rose shrubs.
From Corrie’s Anniversary Garden
One day this week, my attention was so taken by the sky when a pair of birds were playing with each other. They were gone by the time I took the picture.
Strawberries are beginning to grow.
A bouquet I made for Corrie’s space at the table.

Published by Corrie's Mom

They say teacher turn over is high right now, and many teachers will leave the profession in five years or less. I will enter my seventh year as a full-time teacher, and my 12th year in education after I'd started as a sub and teacher assistant. I was the student in the 1990s you did not want in your classroom because I was diagnosed with ADHD and did not know how to socialize with other kids. I was due to be tested for autism, but this was considered an ostracizing experience for a child then, especially a girl. I am a third generation teacher and author of seventeen creative works.

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