My Memorial Pixie Garden

This is a picture of my son Ben and his beautiful wife Hannah.  These family pictures were taken the end of July, fortunately.  Because in mid-August Ben lost his life in an accident.

Ben has always been a lot of fun.  Sort of the family clown ... can you tell.

 In the upper, age order picture, Ben decided he needed a lift from his siblings.  In the picture below, taken at the cemetery, after almost a week of celebrating his life, his wife takes his spot in the middle.  She wants to remain a member of our family, which is just what we want.  We know how much our son Ben adored her, and she has truly become a member of our family over the last five years.  We are so grateful for her.

Through this time of love, pain, joy and sorrow, we have, as a family, been upheld by each other, and by our many friends and extended family.  We love Ben and expect to see him again, with the same sociality we have enjoyed with him here.  This knowledge has been a great comfort.  

We have received, flowers, cards, goodies, art projects, framed thoughts, catered meals for us all, framed pictures, inspirational art, books, cards, jewelry, meals, thoughtful letters, texts, emails and hundreds of kind thoughts on our Face Book and Intstagram pages.  We have been in the prayers of hundreds, perhaps thousands, and have felt the power of those prayers.  We have in short, been comforted by the Lord through the ministrations of good people.

 This is Shirley, Jann, Joanne, Cindy, Margo, Ann, Margie and Kimi.  They are most of the members of my Art Group (We're just missing Trina)  We got together on Monday for our end of summer garden tour (I'll be sharing that in another post).  When we got to Jann's house I was admiring and snapping shots of this charming Pixie Garden, when Kimi came up behind me, and said, "Its for you, we all got together last week and made it for you, in lieu of flowers."  What dear friends, they had each brought items to contribute.  I was simply overwhelmed by their generosity.  How comforting it is to know how much good is in this world.

 Here is Ben's memorial garden as it sits on one of two catalpa stumps by each side of my front gate.  Its a fitting place, as it was Ben, after learning to cut down trees during a year of wild land fire fighting, that cut down the aged trees.  The catalpas were over a hundred years old and more than half of their branches were dead.  When we asked him to help us cut them down, he came almost immediately.  

I'd been thinking all summer that we needed to put another container garden on the other stump.  There is a fairy garden on the stump to the right.  What a lovely reminder of my wonderful son.  Thank you girls.