Fresh Blooms, Fragile Roots, the Landscape of Loss, and New Life

I found a photo from six years ago. Read on and you will find it.

I noticed how the landscape has changed dramatically. Of my yard, home, heart.

I remember that season, when I took the picture, though now it feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe even another life altogether. Maybe someone else’s life.

It was a season when my vegetable garden had just been rebuilt and was ready to flourish after letting it go. I was in a season of grieving the loss of my dad and helping support my mom, as she navigated her loss and new life as a widow and launching and re-launching my kids.

My roses, hydrangeas, and lilacs were blooming. The backyard path leading from our driveway to our deck was just newly laid, though I still carry a raw, visceral memory of how difficult it was for us to complete that project.

At the time, we did not yet know why everything felt so heavy. We did not yet understand how brain cancer was affecting curious things happening around us.

It was only weeks before Jon’s diagnosis.

Everything was blooming then. The weeds were few, the flowers prolific, the seeds we planted were bursting through the fresh soil, and time still felt like it was on our side. With the unexpected gift of time during lockdown, the future still felt wide open too.

But the picture I found…

Two months into a global pandemic.
Two months before I walked my husband into the ER and was told to wait in my car for nearly two hours before they finally allowed me inside to tell me they found a large mass on his brain.
A year before my mom died.
Three years before Jon died, too.

The lilacs in the photo came from the very first tree planted on our property, a gift from my mom and dad to Jon and me twenty-one years ago. The fragrant blooms were abundant that year.

Now all three of them are gone.

This past week, the lilac tree had to be dug up.

Shifting soil revealed roots and once-strong branches that had become rather fragile.

We planted a portion of it in another spot to see if we could salvage it. Only time—and a lot of garden love—will tell.

After years of strange weather, pest infestations that damaged other trees, heavy snow, deep freezes, decline, and storms that took their toll, my son and I finally dug it up. Standing there looking at what remained, I realized how much memory a landscape can hold.

The lone rocking chair—though it used to be a pair—is still there.
The small wicker table still sits on the deck, though now with frayed edges and wear.
Flowers and trees struggle in places where they once flourished with ease.
And almost everything else about this image feels like another lifetime.

The deck had recently been stained at the time of this photo. Jon had time on his hands like many people did in those early pandemic months. The sign that read Laugh Out Loud felt fitting then. Lighthearted. Ordinary. Hopeful, even. The motto of our family then is weary and worn and has taken a beating, too.

Truthfully, we still laugh a lot.

But now the deck has mismatched boards, some worn with age and weather, others newer replacements added over the past year.

When I look at that photograph now, I almost laugh at the irony of it all.

It isn’t because loss is funny or suffering is light. None of the heartache is worthy of an LOL.

But because there is something almost surreal about looking back at a photograph taken before you knew your world was about to change.

Before hospital waiting rooms and scans and words you can never unhear.
Before grief settled into the walls of a home and the landscape around it.
Before loss altered not only who was standing beside you, but the person you yourself would become in the aftermath.

Over the last few weeks, I have spent an enormous amount of time outside tending to a landscape shaped not only by weather, but by years of survival, grief, exhaustion, deferred care, and seasons where simply making it through the day required everything I had. I have spent months trying to recuperate the inside of my home much the same.

Some of it simply could not be helped.

There were years when keeping my husband alive mattered more than pruning shrubs and pulling weeds, athough there were days I found myself outside doing exactly that while talking to God and process all we were carrying. Stepping out into the garden to pull weeds and plant random seeds is therapeutic in its own way.

Years of widowhood and loss left little energy for flower beds and overgrowth.

Years of my own injured shoulder and back (and heart) made ordinary work painful and slow.

Years spent helping and guiding grieving teen and young adult children keep moving forward while trying to figure out how to do the same myself as the only parent left standing beside them.

And so the landscape changed while I was trying to survive.

Branches became overgrown.
Beds became crowded.
Flowers died or didn’t bloom.
The soil and mulch eroded.
The pavers on the path began to slip away.
The deck boards became worn.

Grief leaves visible and invisible wear.
Things weakened under the weight of storms, deep freezes, harsh seasons, and time.

Honestly, some days it feels impossible to separate what happened to the yard from what happened to me.

There were seasons I felt embarrassed and shame by how much had become overgrown, worn down, tattered, delayed, neglected, untended, or left unfinished.

But I have learned living in survival mode often looks like deferred care, not failure or neglect. It is a choice of what matters most in the moment.

There were years when fighting for Jon’s life consumed nearly everything. And after losing him, it has been years spent trying to fight for my own life in a different way while helping my grieving children rebuild theirs too.

But I have learned living in survival mode often looks like deferred care, not failure or neglect.
heather Lebano

There is so much hidden inside the life (and grief) of a widow. So much unseen and unknown. So much more than just the tears.

The visible wear is easy to point to.

The invisible wear settles quietly into the body, the mind, the home, the heart, the business of loss, managing finances, decision fatigue, simply getting up every day, parenting alone, and even the landscape around us.

Maybe that is also why rebuilding has felt so sacred and personal to me these last few years.

Slow work.
Intentional work.
Tender work.
Tending work.

Work that asks us to keep tending to what remains while being the memory keeper and learning how to live again at the same time. Learning how to put yourself first after caring for everyone and everything else for so long.

My husband died three years ago, but the life we knew died when he was diagnosed, nearly six years ago. I’ve been “surviving,” healing, rebuilding ever since.

Maybe that is why this photo resonates so deeply with me now.

Because when I look at it, I no longer just see the deck or the lilacs or the sign that once felt playful and lighthearted.

I see a landscape—and a life—before brain cancer, loss, and grief reshaped it.

Before loss altered the view.
Before trauma settled into the body.
Before survival became the work of our days.
Before rebuilding, replanting, and learning how to tend to what remained became part of life, too.

And perhaps that is what I have really been tending these last few years, especially these last few weeks.

Not only the yard.
Not only the damage left behind by storms and neglected seasons.

But the landscape of my own heart.
I’ve been tending to me.

This week, my son and I—with an enthusiastic helper beside us—spent a great deal of time pulling weeds, planting flowers, and repairing a worn path that had originally been laid in 2020. The girls and I prepared the space for days leading up to it, pulling river rocks buried deep in the eroded soil.

It was difficult, muddy work back then too. Looking back now, I understand more clearly why everything felt so heavy and confusing during that season.

Working on laying a new path again this week unearthed memories and feelings long buried beneath years of survival and grief.

I think all the digging, pruning, clearing, rebuilding, and tending unearthed more than roots these past few weeks.

It brought clarity too.

Somewhere in all the digging, pruning, clearing, rebuilding, and remembering, I felt God gently revealing His presence in some of the hardest moments of our lives.
Moments where a peace beyond understanding somehow still found us.
Moments where the painful reality of doors closing was for our protection.

And by the grace of God, I can see now how much healing had quietly been taking root beneath the surface while I was busy simply trying to survive. When I was trying to heal my landscape, I was also beginning to heal myself.

And yet now, a renewed path and fresh blooms greet us warmly at the gate and with the first steps down from the deck.

A young magnolia tree now grows where the lilac once stood.

Without realizing when I chose the magnolia, I learned they are often associated with perseverance, fortitude, resilience, dignity, resurrection, and the promise of renewal.

Now when I look at that old photograph, I no longer only see a landscape before grief.

I also see how much love, grace, endurance, and quiet strength were already taking root long before I understood how deeply they would be needed.

Looking back now, I can see how God was gently forming perseverance and resilience in me long before I realized how much life would ask of me.

And now, somehow, I can see again the promise of new life—a future filled with hope and maybe even some laughter in what is beginning to bloom and in what is still to come.