On The Death of a Friend...a "PLACE" Friend...

I wrote this essay fifteen years ago, when Stevens Nursery, once upon a time and for many years existed on Riverside Drive around the corner from Gelsons…I was still feeling the grief of losing my brother Jon Clarke, the musician, to kidney cancer only a few months earlier. The similarities were there on this day…

ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND — As I wander through the sunlit, colorful, fragrant paths of the nursery grounds, I am profoundly aware of the approaching passing of a loved one.  This time, not of a beloved family member as earlier this year when my brother died of cancer after enduring a long and arduous illness, but rather, this time, the loss of a place that has become an old friend. And I can’t help being struck with the parallels.  

I am reminded that change is a difficult thing, and not always indicative of progress.  Change inevitably brings with it loss.  It may, in some cases,  result in a benefit to someone, in a profit, in a well-concluded negotiation.  That’s the primary dissimilarity between the loss of a person, and the loss of a place. With the loss of a place, someone has made a deal. 

Change remind us of our own mortality, and of our own lack of control over the organism that is our “self”.  We see the landscape changing, we grieve the loss of a friend,  we feel some part of ourselves slipping away.

Similarities.  As we journey through an illness with a loved one, we cling to hope.  We hold on optimistically to the possibility that this treatment might be the one that turns things around, this new physician might be the one that brings the healing, that extends the patient’s presence. Despite the doctors’ pronunciations of odds, we hope.

It’s not so different here.  Maybe someone will change their mind.  Maybe the balance sheets will change and the condominium development proposed to displace these grounds will suddenly not look so profitable.  Maybe  someone will make a reasoned appeal, and the handful of people who decided on behalf of their neighborhood that it’s better to have an acre and a half of concrete, wall to wall, than to risk the presence of a four-story building in their pristine neighborhood already dotted with other four-story buildings will realize it’s better to leave some space to salvage a bit of these grounds and they will reconsider their decision.

When we’re in the process of losing a loved one, visits are a mixed blessing of joy and pain.  There is joy that in this moment we are together, we are sharing a thought, a feeling, a memory and we would not miss this moment.  We try not to think of tomorrow.  And there is pain, in that ahead of us lies the possibility that it will be over, that this will be gone.

It’s the same here, today.  Each vista, each turn in the path that brings visions of spring  blooms and young saplings reaching to the blue sky, becomes more precious because soon this will be gone.

Perhaps it seems like a stretch here, this mingling of metaphors.  Probably my own personal loss is too fresh, and it colors all experiences in life, even this.  

I’ve wandered through these gardens periodically over the years with no purpose other than to look for inspiration, to look for signs of the arrival of Spring.  Sometimes I have been shopping, but sometimes just “being”. I know I’m not the only one.

Here, just under two acres of blossoms, of tall eucalyptus and palms, of rose gardens and cactus gardens, of brilliantly hued flats of bedding plants, pansies, geraniums, lobelia, and daisies, of tall, lush ferns and calalilies, of fruit laden citrus trees, of the flowering Sweet Olive plants that fill the air with sweetness here (the “candy plants” as [name]of the nursery staff calls them) here, just under two acres of paradise await the metaphorical swing of the wrecker’s ball.

This family business has been in our neighborhood for over sixty-five years. There is no other nursery like it in all of Southern California.  It has been lovingly passed from father to sons.  No chain store here, no corporation, no stock holders to please.  Just people who love their work and who love the gifts a garden brings. 

The nursery stood originally, in 1941, on the land occupied by Gelson’s market on Laurel Canyon and Riverside Drive.  The Stevens family and their gardens moved to the present location around the corner on Riverside Drive in the early sixties. 

I became a customer of the nursery over forty years ago.   “A flat of pansies, some ferns for along the front walk, and...do you have anyone who could plant the Eugenia hedge for me?”

Not a problem.  

“What creature do you think chewed up this leaf?  Would the Night Blooming Jasmine do better with more sun?  I’ll take that one, the fragrant yellow rose with the touch of burgundy along the edge of its petals...”

Six homes and two grand children later.  What will grow in this spot, I ask.  Can you send your people over to plant for me? Can you get the shrubs there by noon?  

Death,  taxes and progress.  Unavoidable.

Sometimes death results from a failure of the heart, a highly fallible organ.  

Sometimes it results from the failure to consider the messages of the heart.  

Sometimes it results from the invasion of cells that enter and destroy. Sometimes it results from the invasion of concrete and For Sale signs.

Maybe not.  Maybe someone will make a reasonable appeal.  Maybe someone will strike a deal.  Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe there will be a healing.