[6] The Lemon Tree – How to use grief to make the world a better place

Today is a very special day for me: it’s the five year anniversary of the passing of my sister Kristin and my son Theo’s first birthday. This post is a reflection on growing anew following loss.

When I was 13, I grew a lemon plant from seed, which over the years blossomed into an eight-foot-tall tree. Adapting to the Connecticut climate, it spent the spring through fall outside and was brought inside every winter. After I left for college and throughout my time living in NYC, the tree remained with my parents. The winter Kristin passed was very cold however, and with my parents focused on her health, it froze and died in their garage.

Fast forward a year and a half later, I was walking behind their garage where the pot had been discarded and noticed something miraculous: three new stems sprouting out from a long-forsaken gnarl of roots. We carefully separated the new growth from the old root mass, and I have once again grown a “new” lemon tree (and it’s now almost as tall as me).

The broader application here is that grief acts just like the lemon tree, making us freeze up and want to go dormant, but we have the innate ability to eventually prosper from it. When grief hits, we tend to do one of three things: 1) completely shut down, 2) enter a state of denial, or 3) grin and bear it. In my experience, there’s a fourth more positive and often underutilized option: take actions to honor those we’ve lost, and use their memory to make the world a better place.

Kristin loved to volunteer, so after over a year of contemplating how to use my grief positively, I joined the board of Union Settlement, a nonprofit that provides a variety of essential services to East Harlem. This has allowed me to keep her memory alive and share professional skills with an underserved community. There are many ways to honor our love ones, and I encourage each of you to take a few minutes during the holidays to reflect on who you’ve lost and consider ideas on how to continue their legacy and help your community.

Theo’s birth four years to day of Kristin’s death is a daily reminder of the circularity of life, and that despite inevitable times of decline, we all innately have the desire to grow, persist, and form connections. These abilities never go away but can be forgotten when we face something perceived to be insurmountable. Being a dad has also helped me appreciate that investing in how to effectively help others is a fundamental principle for living a fulfilling life. When we use our lost loved one’s legacy to nurture and grow the next generation and our community, the resulting new sense of purpose in ourselves helps fill the hole left by their loss.

“What die didn’t stay dead, what die didn’t stay dead, you’re alive, so alive.” – Taylor Swift “Marjorie”