Nothing Truly Dies
A gardener knows: growth doesn’t follow a perfect timeline. Neither do students. Neither do we.
Last night, I added to a wreath.
It started simple long ago—air ferns clipped onto each side, Spanish moss draped through the middle. I watched it change over time. The moss stretched out, slow and steady, inch by inch, over years. The air ferns bloomed in their own time.
But like a recalcitrant teenager, the wreath stalled. It stopped evolving. The moss grew long but uneven. The structure leaned too far in one direction. It needed tending to become its full potential. I stayed with it. I didn’t control it, but I also didn’t abandon it. I chose to tend it again—not to force it, but to guide it.
At home, in my own garden, the licorice vine and strawflowers had already bloomed and faded. Their stems turned brown and brittle, signaling it was time to cut them back and make room for what’s next. I clipped them, brought them inside, and added them to the wreath. Later, when I visited the land where my son now has his home, I gathered more of the so-called dead things. Dried stems. Spent blooms. The parts most people would leave behind. I brought those home, too.
What was stagnant became balanced again. What looked like loss became part of something new.
Gardening teaches patience. Some growth is fast. Some is slow. Both kinds of growth matter. Blooming isn’t linear. Launching isn’t either.
Even when something has a “season,” it doesn’t always follow the calendar. Lemons are usually harvested in fall or winter. I picked lemons this morning—in the middle of summer. That’s how growth works. Even when it’s supposed to happen, it doesn’t always happen when you expect it to.
Students are like that, too.
Sometimes you expect a milestone to come at a certain age or in a certain grade—and it doesn’t. Sometimes a student who’s been shut down for years blooms overnight. Sometimes progress is invisible—until one day it isn’t. The garden reminds me to stop forcing the timeline.
My brother died. And yet, somehow, he’s still here. I see him in my son. I see him in my grandson. I hear him in my own voice, in the reasons I fight for students who’ve been chipped away at by systems that don’t understand how life actually works. I don’t tell this story for sympathy. I tell it because it’s true: if my brother had received this kind of support, the outcome could have been different. That’s why this work exists. That’s why I’m still here, tending to it.
In many cultures, loved ones stay with us. They stay as long as the stories are told. If we carry the memory forward, they live on.
Most people would’ve tossed those dried stems in the compost. Most people would’ve walked by the brittle parts and said, “Cut that back. It’s done.” But I brought them home. I added them to the wreath because I know how to make something beautiful out of what looks like loss. That’s what tending is. That’s what teaching is. That’s what living is.
Nothing is truly dead if you’re still holding the seeds, if the roots are still feeding the ground, if the stories are still being told. If we tend, teach, parent, and carry forward what matters, life continues.
Let’s tend to the garden. Let’s carry the seeds forward. Let’s remember: nothing truly dies.
