I harvested my garlic today in tears.

Last year, I didn’t do the harvesting. My brother did.

He came for a visit and, needing something to do, spent the afternoon pulling the garlic from the ground, brushing off the dirt, and hanging them to dry. It was just another summer day.

That was July 2025.

He passed away a few months later, in November.

As I harvested this year’s crop, I could see him standing there, doing what he had done the year before. It struck me that this was the last garlic harvest he would ever touch.

Then another memory came flooding in.

When our father died fifty or so years ago,  just a year after we had lost our mother, I was eight, and my brother was five. I went out to the garden and cried my eyes out.

He heard me.

He and our youngest brother came out and joined me.

We didn’t talk.

We pulled weeds.

With tears streaming down our faces, we worked the soil as if the work itself would keep us from falling apart.

In a way, it did.

Working the garden was what we had always done with our mother whenever we could help her. Without realizing it, we returned to something familiar.

The garden, the earth, and the little mountain hut we called home held us.

They reminded us that although we had lost our parents, we were still alive. Mother Earth held our grief until, little by little, we were strong enough to carry it ourselves.

And now, all these years later, I found myself back in the garden. Grieving again.

Different loss.

Same earth.

I don’t believe in avoiding pain. I believe in feeling it, letting it have its place, and then moving forward as best we can.

Life comes with twists and knots.

Loss is part of it.

So is love.

The garlic will be eaten over the coming months. The harvest will disappear.

But every July, I’ll remember my brother’s hands, just as I remember three children pulling weeds together, finding comfort in the soil beneath their feet.

People asked me why I spent so much time in the garden, because that’s where I connected. It has been teaching me about life all along.

Earth to earth.

Dust to dust.

In between is the love we shared.

The earth feeds our bodies.

Love feeds our souls.