A year after my father passed, I dug up my gooseberry bush and shoved it down into the compost heap. I was numb and paddling in grief, unaware of how deep I trod; I let the bush’s prickly branches feather grazes up and down my arms, grateful for the exertion of digging and vaguely aware that the thorns stung a little girl far, far away.
He always loved gooseberries. Like him, they were blunt in flavour and prone to bruising; like him, they had few friends. As a child, I loved gooseberries too. I thrilled at the feel of their fuzzy coats on my tongue, the way they burst into floral vinegar. They appealed to so many of my senses at once. In later years, when I began to care for my father, it seemed right that a place be made in my garden for this most maligned of berries. We planned to remember and celebrate them each summer. A forgotten fruits club, if you will. A conspiracy of gooseberry fools.
Food made my father happy, and if it was food he couldn’t find anywhere else, it made him all the happier. He longed for the special and the strange. His house was stuffed with curiosities and tarnished treasures; somewhere beneath the dust and neglect, there lived a secret museum. He firmly believed that all the best monuments had snacks. That part was my job. It was, if I’m honest, the only way I could please him. He no longer had legs to chase his dreams, so I brought wizard food to him in paper bags: stinking cheeses, ghost-pale mushrooms, and those sour berries that made most people wince.
We had three summers of fruit before the end. I took the last Tupperware box to his hospital bed and felt grateful the gooseberries had flushed early, while he could still find the strength to eat. I still remember his joy at opening them; the creak in his voice, the smile that melted to a grimace. He’d let me style his long gray hair into little pigtails.
I would like to tell you that I have better memories, that gooseberries are the just the footnote in a rich and rewarding relationship between father and daughter. I told myself this tale many times. But when our parents are not the people we need them to be, we lie to ourselves. I picked handfuls of lies for three years. I bent backwards beyond the thorns. I marveled at the symmetry of the stripes across each berry. I did not allow myself into the shadows beneath the leaves.
From the moment I first put my hands in its soil, this garden has been my own refraction of the world: chaotic and lovely in its bounty of hope. The gentlest of riots and the rarest of things: a beauty that can be designed, nurtured, owned. But through my father’s last summer, something changed. Time turned loose. The seasons came knocking on my door as usual, but I put my hands over my ears and waited until their footsteps faded. Tomato leaves yellowed. Vines grew in gaping ringlets. The lawn turned to daisies and thicket, a damp citadel for bees. And all the while, the gooseberry bush seemed less like the tribute I had intended and more like the misguided prayer of an angry child. I raged at its insolent green. Despite being crowded by lilacs and roses, its greedy branches spun up to gulp the sun. Had I been keen to punish others, I would have denied it water, but I found greater solace in denying myself.
The weeks dragged on. Death waited silently on my father’s bed like a pair of folded pyjamas, and I began to dread the time when the bush would fruit again and I would be reminded of my tiny acts of service. They were so empty, now. They were too full to fathom. I fantasised about ripping out the bush and was haunted by a lullaby of tearing roots. It seemed blasphemous to commemorate death by mirroring the loss in my garden. A gardener always feels guilty for digging up a plant; this was so much worse.
He died in September at harvest time, his skin so thin and dry that it crackled like autumn leaves. I sought to forget, and forgot too much.
A year later, in December, I went with a friend to see Monty Don speak. He talked about building Longmeadow with deep affection, telling its stories with old photos and dry jokes. I don’t know if he meant to speak of it as legacy, but it felt that way to me. A garden is always a work in progress, he said. It is never finished. That is not the point. If something doesn’t work, if you don’t like it, if its time has passed…move it. Move on. The garden is going to move on whether you keep up with it or not.
I think we forget sometimes that we don’t need permission to do things. That evening reminded me that in my garden, I could do what I wanted without feeling like a pretentious god. I could move on for the sake of progress and pleasure. Reshape that part of my legacy. My dead father wouldn’t be angry with me for getting rid of the gooseberry bush, and anyway, he was no longer there to eat the gooseberries. I couldn’t bear the thought of eating them or wasting them, either. So I did it. I dug. I pulled, I shook, I bled. I shoved that bush so far down into the compost heap that the sweet, rotten stench of decaying grass rushed up to choke me. I loved it and hated myself and felt almost dizzy in those heightened seconds of loss. A breath later, I hated myself a little bit less.
As I walked back towards the space where the bush had grown, I expected its absence to jump out, empty and obvious. Forgotten fruits, determined to be mourned. Instead, I felt a distant stirring of possibility – gardener’s instinct kicking back in. Something else could be planted there. What would it be?
In that moment, I returned to the garden. I returned to my own skin to find it still warm and in touch with cool, damp soil. In time, I cleared away the old plants, the dead leaves, the rattling seed pods. Somewhere beneath the dust and neglect, there lived a secret museum; I knelt down, listened to the birds, and began a resurrection.
Leave a Reply