Mauricio Franco, MS4
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Our plantitas remind me of my mother.
I grew up watching her tend to her garden. As an adult looking back, I can recognize now it was her way of staying connected to her family and roots back in Guatemala.
The land is what sustained my mother and her family. They lived off the food they grew, and it is something she passed down to us simply by watching her and putting our own hands into the soil at her side.
I remember most her sunflowers, rose garden, chiles, tomatoes and the chipilin growing in our yard. She would share her knowledge by identifying the flowers and the foliage as we passed fields and gardens on our drives and walks.
She would say eso lo sembrábamos.
I once read a post about grief and talking to deceased loved ones. It reminded me the that my grief is a daily process that ebbs and flows. No matter how old you are when you lose someone, it hurts and leaves you vulnerable and raw in ways you continue to discover.
As busy as I am, I try to be conscious of it and sit with my grief. I have a relationship with my grief because I have and will continue to have a relationship with my mother-- her spirit, her energy, and the many ways she is present in the children of my family. We all carry pieces of
her with us-- our laugh, our smile, our temperament, or stubbornness, and our resilience.
I have found myself longing to hear her voice, longing to give her a call to share my ups and downs, longing to hear her encouragement.
Our plantitas, I realize, are how we sit in conversation with her. We connect with each other and with her memory by planting her favorite flowers. Our garden is how we keep her present, it is how we keep her spirit alive. My husband and I celebrate my mother with each seed we plant.
It is these practices that remind us our deceased are never too far. These are our plantitas.