Earlier this spring, on a bright Sunday after worship, we dedicated a memorial garden on the lake side of our grounds. “Dedicated” is church language for something simple: we gathered outside, said prayers, sang a hymn while the wind kept stealing the melody, and asked God to bless a patch of earth set aside for remembering. There are photos on the website, and in them you can see what I saw that morning: people standing shoulder to shoulder, some smiling, some crying, most managing a little of both.
In the weeks since, the garden has quietly become one of my favorite places at St. Dunstan’s. It sits where you can hear the water, and on Sunday mornings, the bell. There are two benches, good sturdy ones, placed by people who understood that a memorial garden is really a sitting garden. You do not plant grief. You sit with it, preferably somewhere with birdsong.
A small crew of parishioners tends it, most Saturday mornings, with gloves, a wheelbarrow, and a thermos that makes the rounds. Nobody was recruited. They simply showed up, the way people here tend to. I join them when I can, partly because weeding shrinks every problem to a manageable size, and partly because I like being reminded that God’s favorite work seems to start small. I have preached on the mustard seed more than once. My parishioners would tell you it was more than twice.
Much of what grows there was given in memory of someone. Rosemary, which has stood for remembrance for centuries. Daylilies dug from a mother’s garden and carried here in a five-gallon bucket. Hydrangeas, lavender, and a stubborn little rosebush that lost every leaf in April and is covered in buds today. We plant perennials on purpose. Things that die back and return preach a quiet sermon all on their own.
Remembering is something we do together
Here is what I most want you to know about the garden, especially if you are carrying a loss right now. Church, at its best, treats remembering as a communal practice rather than a private burden. Every Sunday at the Eucharist, which is our communion service (the word simply means “thanksgiving”), we remember Jesus out loud, together, around a table. We are practiced at this. We believe memory is too heavy to be one person’s homework. So when you sit on one of those benches, you are not alone with your remembering. The whole parish holds it with you, the way the ground holds the roots.
The garden is open whenever the grounds are open, which is most daylight hours, most days. You do not need to be a member. You do not need to be sure what you believe. Come on a lunch break, or after school pickup, or at that hour when the lake turns gold. Sit awhile. Bring coffee, or bring nothing. Say a name out loud, or let the wind say it for you.
And if you would like to plant something in memory of someone you love, the Parish Office would be glad to help it find a home here.
The red doors get most of the attention at St. Dunstan’s, and they have earned it. But this spring we opened another kind of door, this one low to the ground and green at the edges. It does not lock. If you are reading this with someone’s name in your heart, know that the bench will be there in the morning, and so will the place kept for you.
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