I Killed the Grass

In early April my wife and I were shopping at Lowe’s; as we were walking into the store we noticed one of their gas grills was on sale for $79.

Our grill was somewhere around seven years old; the black cast aluminum body had faded to ghostly gray, the guts of the thing were crumbling under the rust causing the flames to engulf anything I’d cook on it—it was our version of hamburger hell.

The $79 price tag was too good to pass up, especially since it came assembled.

I attempted to hoist the gangly beast into my trunk only after removing one of the shelves; then I barely squeezed it in, in what looked like a 400 pound gorilla trying to put on a ballet slipper.

For several weeks our new grill sat side-by-side with the old one, during which time my wife asked me if I could move the old one before it killed the grass. We live in a condo in the heart of the city and our piece of turf is only twenty feet wide, so killing any of the lawn is as noticeable as a comb-over on a bald man’s head.

I got busy over a couple weeks period of time and completely forgot about my wife’s request, only to come home one day to the grill having mysteriously levitated and moved itself from the center of our yard to a place beside our privacy fence. Actually, my wife had wrestled the thing; I guess she’d given up on me ever doing it.

As she had feared our lawn now had a spot of dead grass in it about four feet long and a couple feet wide; a blemish if there ever was one. I guess I’ve been hoping the Lawn Fairy will come one night while we’re sleeping and Hydroseed that bare spot—you know, that mixture of grass seed, water, fertilizer and wood fiber that looks like bluish-green oatmeal. Hey, there’s a Santa Clause, isn’t there, why not a Lawn Fairy!

The past two weeks have been very busy and draining for us, my nephew was involved in a head-on car crash, lived for a week on life-support and passed away last Friday. The funeral was this week on Wednesday, so the two weeks have been a blur.

I’m not an especially emotional person, but I became emotional when I was reminded what death looks like in the eyes of the dying. When the decision was made to take my nephew off of life-support I stayed in the room with my niece, her sister and a few other family members and watched the monitors that my nephew was hooked up to begin to fade like letting the air out of a tire. There is an emptiness in the eyes that is indescribable.

I think grieving takes time; none of us grieve completely all at one time, but it kind of moves like the second hand on a clock. With each passing second one deals with the grief in different ways with differing amounts of intensity, and, there are many steps to complete the process. But, sometimes we never get over our grief.

My wife and I were sitting in our living room this morning and she asked me if she could share something with me; “sure” I said.

She began to tell me about looking at the dead grass in our back yard, that spot that happened because I failed to move the grill. Initially, I thought I was going to end up on the proverbial doghouse, but I soon discovered I wasn’t. Thank goodness, because I hate kibbles-n-bits.

She mentioned how that patch of dead grass had helped her to process my nephew’s death, and, those things that we think are negative or damaged or blighted, can actually be used to help us make sense of some of things that life is about; when otherwise we just see dead grass.

  My wife recounted how she had stood at out kitchen window and watched as a robin landed on our lawn and began to accumulate blades of dead grass in its mouth. The robin bobbed to pick up piece after piece of brown, lifeless grass, which a few months earlier had been a vibrant verdant.

The robin gathered the dead grass and flew away, only to return for a second trip. Again, the bird danced and bobbed picking up brown blades with its mouth and flew away for a second time.

In that moment it struck my wife; the things in life that sometimes appear to have no meaning, like dead grass, actually can be life-giving with great purpose. The robin was collecting dead grass to weave its nest, and in that nest it would raise baby robins. What was dead would help to provide a living environment for the robin.

We don’t always see it, and even sometimes when we do it takes a really long time, for something life-giving to come out of the death of nephew who’d been killed in a head-on car crash.

But, if we’ll look closely, we’ll see single blades being picked up and used to give life. In the case of my nephew, his death, one blade at a time, began to teach us all how to live as though we’re dying; how we need to make the most of each day, tell people we love that we love them, and, allow those things in us that are selfish to die.

Maybe it wasn’t an accident that I killed the grass; maybe it was God’s way of giving life—to the robin and to my wife.

Advertisement

~ by Ken Dillman on May 22, 2010.