A few weeks ago was my mother Betty’s yartzeit. 18 years. My mother has now been gone the length of my entire childhood. Those first 18 years seemed like an eternity as I was growing up.

A lifetime, in fact.

Yet now 18 years seems to have passed in a flash. It could be 8 years, or sometimes it feels like 18 months.

Grief time doesn’t follow physics.

Eighteen years ago this summer, a few months after she died, I created a special memorial for my mother on her Bastille Day birthday.

An eternal memorial garden.  And now, with her 100th birthday coming up, a new poignancy is added. That garden is gone.

As it seems to happen daily, images of my former home pop up in social media memories. This week, the image of a rose-covered arbor brings with it a deep association with my mother.

For 2 decades, every Sunday in the spring and summer, my parents drove 30 minutes from my childhood home in West Hempstead, where they still lived, to spend the day with me in my gardens.

With every visit to my home, my mother’s face would light up as she walked through that arbor that led to my patio and verdant back property. Leaning on her metal walker with the iridescent green tennis balls adorning the legs, she would break out into a deep smile, her blue eyes wide with child-like wonder as she surveyed the lushness in front of her and exclaim: “It’s a Mechaye!” ( Yiddish for joy, extreme pleasure.)

By the simple act of walking through that perfumed rose and honeysuckle arbor, enveloped by beauty, her stress would melt, her physical pains seemingly disappear, and she would be at peace. Nothing gave me more pleasure than giving this to my mother.

Urban Dreams

When I lived in a penthouse in the city, I had a large terrace and filled it with dozens and dozens of containers, planters, and window boxes filled with shrubs, roses, and flowering perennials that I tended with great care. My mother delighted in sitting in this urban garden. When I moved to Huntington,  I knew I couldn’t leave my plants behind, so my mother hired a special truck to transport them to my new home.

How My Garden Grows

On the early September day in 2001, when I moved to Long Island from the city, my parents were at my new house to greet Hersh and me. When the truck arrived with my many urban plants, what had seemed like such a large garden on my penthouse terrace was suddenly so small in comparison to the acres of land they now rested on.

In time, they dug in their roots just as I would.

We all looked around at the vast bareness as we set up a table outside on the dirt to share the first meal, which my mother brought for us.  There was no brick patio, gunite pool, no fences, no shrubs, no plants, no lawn, just some overgrown weeds. Everyone saw a vacant lot, but in my mind, it was a blank canvas, a place for me to create. I shared my visions with my mother as we ate, and as with every other art endeavor, I did, she was enthusiastic

I would nurture and care for the plants and the land in the ways my mother always took care of me.

Garden Memorial 

The summer after my mother died, I held a memorial celebration of her life at my home on her birthday. I asked each friend and family member who attended to bring a plant that I would plant in her honor.

She would live on forever in my garden.

That afternoon, we gathered in a large circle in my back lawn, the 60 or more plants sitting in the center. At the very end of the service, we went around the circle, and each person shouted out in their distinctive voice: “It’s a  Mechaye”

The following week, I set about planting all the new flora, relying on my skills as a collage artist to find the proper place in my already overfilled garden. My hope had been that these plants would grow and watch over me, as I watched over them- my mother’s presence always felt.

A living, ever-growing testament to her love.

When I lost the house a few years ago, it broke my heart, leaving this part of the garden, but it felt like her spirit would always be there to keep an eye on my garden and to live on.

Now the Betty Edelstein garden is destroyed, along with everything else I created on that land. In some ways, this cuts the deepest.

Today, along with all the landscape, there is no longer any arbor to walk through. That, too, was removed by the new owners. My land is no longer a Mechaya!

Grief Miracles

But then there are grief miracles.

Something I have learned to look for.

My mother made her presence known as I was writing this piece.

On Sunday morning, as I looked out my office window, I noticed morning glories creeping up the side of my house, entwining the entrance to my office. These trumpet-shaped flowers had not been there the day before and were making their first appearance at this address.  They must have been stowaways from my former home, refugee seeds sneaking in on any number of clay pots filled with plant life that I brought with me. They lay dormant for the past year.  But seeing these old friends reminded me of my mother.

I spoke to my mother every morning, and in the spring and summer, I would sit out on my upstairs balcony to chat on the phone with her while watching the morning glories appear. The morning cheer of these flowers climbing the trellis echoed the joy of speaking to my mother.

It’s been 18 years since I could pick up the phone to speak to my mother, something I took for granted those first 18 years, when more often than not it was a phone call to pick me up from school. I miss her sweet, gentle voice with the subtle New York accent, though I have been told I only have to listen to my own distinctive voice to hear hers.

But I channel her words in my mind every day.

For 18 years, she was always there when I stumbled. And for decades after that.

In these 18 years, I have stumbled, often, but the encouragement and love my mother gave me every single day helped me up again.

She still does.

My Mother’s love grew in my Garden. Today was tangible proof that it continues to bloom.

Today, remembering my mother is a mechaye.