The Wisdom Garden

In back of the small village church, not far from the cemetery but hidden from easy view, Clara maintained her Wisdom Garden, a little plot of land she tended along with the graves. It consisted of rows of miniature, unpainted wooden crosses, each nestled in a bed of flowers, some had sayings, some just a single word. She had Uncle Len build two wooden benches and placed them side by side facing the crosses with a stone basin mounted on a pedestal in between. This she filled with water and the birds came willingly. It was a place open to all, a quiet and peaceful corner, near but apart from the cemetery and its sadness, memories came easier here and weren't quite as painful. You could sit and think, remember, laugh or cry with only the birds as witnesses and anyone could put a cross here for almost any reason. Clara would allow no censorship so there were Biblical references, bits of poems, a few bitter scrawls, first names, advice of all sorts and many well worn cliches. Look before you leap was planted side by side with He who hesitates is lost and Rest in Peace sat next to Rot til hell freezes over. Clara didn't know all the authors and those that she did she kept to herself - the crosses sat in a chest on her front porch, all you had to do was pick one, inscribe or carve or write on it, then anonymously return it and it would find its way to the Wisdom Garden a few days later. Sorry, one read, Mercy was carved on another, Come back! one read in what looked like red nail polish and one, meticulously and delicately carved in tiny script contained the entire 23rd Psalm with Don't take any wooden nickels! added on the reverse side. One had a single eighth note painted on it, one had a childishly drawn skull and crossbones, one was inscribed Watch where you walk underneath an arrow pointing downward. One, block printed in heavy but neat black lettering, read Emergency Exit Only and another featured a single name, Lucas, a name no one knew or could identify.

When someone was "called home", as James liked to say, it was right and necessary to mourn their passing, but it was also important that we celebrate their soul being delivered into the arms of heaven. Show me the proof! the atheists among us would demand. There's a reason it's called faith, James would reply mildly. The Wisdom Garden was a halfway place - it served both those who believed and those who didn't - it was of the secular and of the faithful at the same time.

After my great grandmother died, my grandmother often took me there after a visit to the cemetery. She taught me to sit still and think quiet thoughts, to pray, I suppose, although she never put it that way. While the graves almost made her cry, the Wisdom Garden almost made her smile. I just thought it was an interesting and curious place to go, to wonder at the words on the little crosses, to try and guess who might have written them and why.

I wasn't old enough to fully comprehend death and had only the most childish notions of heaven and hell but I did know about sadness and I understood that my great grandmother was gone, that she would not return and that sitting in the Wisdom Garden made missing her a little easier.

It's good to find a quiet place to be alone with your thoughts and memories, to sort through and decide what to keep and what to give away. We are all so much stronger than we imagine and it's remarkable what we can live with and what we can live without.