The Garden Behind the Gate

Easter is almost here, which means—like so many of us—I found myself outside tending to the small, ordinary tasks that come with preparing for it. The lawn needed attention, especially if there’s to be an Easter egg hunt. So I went through the routine: trimming, clearing, straightening edges. The kind of work you don’t think too much about.

Until I reached the gate.

Toward the back of the yard is a small, fenced-in space we call Joe’s Garden. It’s where our first family cat, Crosseyed Joe, rests. Over time, it’s become a quiet place of memory for others too—our sweet Twitchy, our old friend Floof. But Joe was the first. He made it sacred.

I pushed open the stiff metal gate and got to work like I always do—cutting back the grass, pulling weeds, setting things right again. And then, as predictably as the seasons themselves, I reached the headstones.

And the tears came.

Every.

Single.

Time.

It’s been nearly a decade, and still, nothing about that moment has dulled.

For a long time, I thought it was simply grief in its most familiar form—the loss of those who were part of the rhythm of daily life. And that’s certainly part of it. But kneeling there this time, something felt different. Or maybe just clearer.

It isn’t only that they’re gone.

It’s that the versions of my life that existed with them are gone too.

My parents, old friends, the animals who somehow became family—they weren’t just companions. They were entire chapters. Fully lived-in seasons of my life that had their own texture, their own routines, their own quiet certainties. And now those chapters have closed.

A book lets you turn back. Revisit. Reread. Step into a moment again, even if only for a little while.

Life doesn’t offer that.

And I think that’s where the deeper ache lives.

Maybe it’s something you feel more as the years go on—that subtle awareness that you are, little by little, moving further along in the story. Closer to the epilogue than the opening chapters. Watching the pages stack up behind you, knowing you can’t step back into them the way you once did.

Standing in that garden, it made a certain kind of sense to me—why these very themes found their way so naturally into Beyond That Starry Sky.

Impermanence.

The fleeting nature of a single moment.

The quiet truth that nothing is ever really meant to stay forever.

Those ideas weren’t just written into the story. They were lived long before they were ever put to page.

And yet, I don’t think of Beyond That Starry Sky as a tragic love story. Because even in impermanence, there’s something else—something just as important.

Return.

Like the sakura that appear throughout the story—sometimes softly in the background, sometimes impossible to ignore—they bloom brilliantly, briefly… and then they’re gone. But not forever. They come again. Each spring, without fail.

A reminder.

A promise.

So maybe that’s where I’ve landed with it all this Easter weekend, standing between what has been and what is still to come: Cherish what is in front of you, while it’s here. Because this moment—exactly as it is—will never exist again.

And at the same time, hold onto the quiet hope that not everything lost is gone for good.

Some things, in their own way, find their way back to us.

Even if only in memory.

Even if only in meaning.

Even if only in the turning of the seasons.

Until next time…