What about outdoor plants? Your questions, answeredUnexpected things happen when you try to stop the inevitable. I grew angry with myself. Why couldn’t I save this plant? What more could it want? Like a vulnerable tween competing with social media’s distorted beauty standard, I resented when others posted photos of their new leaf growth. Like my mother’s dementia, I wondered how much life was still left in there. Meanwhile, the plant was daring me to let it die.
When my mother died in January, I gave up and stopped watering the plant. Where a single leaf would drop once a month, they now fell in clusters on the hardwood floor. Where it was once a big-leaved tree, it now was a series of empty stems. I couldn’t save the plant, just like I couldn’t stop my children from growing up and moving away, or prevent my mother from dying alone, surrounded by strangers in PPE gear.Momentarily, I regretted my decision to let the plant die.
Most people will try to tell you how to keep a fiddle-leaf fig alive. I’m telling you it’s OK to let it die. When I remembered its beauty and how happy it made me, I was reminded of my mother’s million-volt smile; my brother standing beside me on the sidelines as he cheered for my son; the feel of my husband’s hand in mine. The pandemic has devastated us and deprived us of the emotional nourishment we get from hugging the people we love but, even in our collective suffering, it can’t steal our memories.
Amid so much loneliness and loss I gave the plant everything it needed — water, light, food, attention and conversation — but it wasn’t enough. And that’s OK. While most people will tell you how to keep a houseplant alive, I’m here to tell you it’s all right to let a plant die. Fiddle-leaf figs are going to continue to thrive, just not in my house.
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