07.30.2008 - 12:21 p.m.

It is four in a very hot afternoon, and my mother and I are digging a hole in the garden. We want it deep, deeper than the topsoil we added all those years ago for the roses. For a while we both work with shovels, but the ground is hard and dry, clay and small rocks. We get the pickaxe, and take turns with it, one swinging, one clearing out the loosened dirt with the spade.

I find myself explaining the proper way to swing a pickaxe to my mother. It's not really arm strength. The arms help get it to a good height, but the down stroke is your entire body, legs and back, everything flexing to bring the axe down, to cut as deeply as possible. A really good swing is actually a circle, every muscle working to pull up and drive down, over and over.

Grief is the same way.

-stonebridge

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