It Died And I Cannot Throw It Out

It died in the spring.

You know roughly when. There was a week where it was clearly going, and then a week where it was clearly gone, and that was four months ago or more.

And it is still on the sill.

You have moved around it. You have dusted the shelf beside it. Somebody visiting looked at it and looked at you and said nothing, and you were grateful.

And every time you think about taking it out, something stops you at exactly the same point. Not sentiment. Something more specific.

Carrying it out feels like a burial. A second one, done alone, on a Tuesday, with a bin bag.

So let me say the honest thing before anything practical.

You are not wrong that it is something. It is just not the thing you think it is.

I shall go to him

David loses a child and says something afterward that his servants cannot understand at all.

But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. (2 Samuel 12:23, King James Version)

I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

You are facing in the direction that verse faces, and the finishing of a thing here has never once been the end of the relationship it belonged to. 2 Samuel 12:23 says I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man standing in front of a dead plant.

Look at how plain he is about the first half. Can I bring him back again. He does not soften it, he does not hedge it, and he gets up and washes and eats.

His servants are appalled, because he fasted while the child was alive and stopped when the child died, which is the opposite of what people do.

And his reason is not resignation. It is direction. He is going somewhere, and the child is there, and the not returning is simply a fact about the order of travel.

You were never asked to hold onto a finished thing in order to keep facing the right way, and letting something be over has never once been the same as turning around. The Spirit of God is what makes that a living sentence rather than a stoic one, and 2 Samuel 12 is where the direction is written down.

What carrying it out actually is

Now the practical half, and I want to be accurate rather than brisk.

Carrying that plant out is not nothing. Your instinct is right and anybody who would wave it away is wrong.

It is an ending. It is the last physical object that came directly out of that part of your life leaving the house, and there will be a moment on the step with it in your hands.

So it should be done properly rather than quickly, and that is the difference between what I am asking and what has been dreaded for four months. The dreaded version is the furtive one. Bin bag, back door, get it over with, do not look. That version really would feel underhand, which is why nobody has been able to make themselves do it.

You are permitted to do this slowly and deliberately, and a thing done properly has never once cost what a thing done furtively costs. What is written in 2 Samuel 12:23 has a man getting up and washing rather than sneaking away, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives an ending its right size.

And the other half of the accuracy, which matters.

It is not a second burial, because the plant is not her and never was. She was buried once. That happened, and there were people there, and it is not something that occurs twice.

You are not standing at a graveside today, and an object that outlived its person by four months has never once been able to hold a funeral. 2 Samuel 12:23 says I shall go to him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates an ending from a burial.

This is the ending of an object that outlived its person by a few months and then stopped. That is all, and it is genuinely allowed to be sad without being that.

You are not burying anybody today, and a dead plant on a windowsill has never once been able to hold a second funeral. The Spirit of God is the one who separates those two firmly, and 2 Samuel 12 is the ground under it.

A minute first

So here is the instruction, and the first part is the part that makes the second part possible.

Stand with it for a minute before you move it.

Not to say goodbye to her. She is not in it. Stand with it for a minute because it stood in her house and then in yours, and because four months of walking around it deserves more than a bin bag at speed.

Then say out loud: it is finished.

Three words, in your ordinary voice. Not a prayer unless you want one. Then pick it up and carry it out. Tip the soil out if you want to keep the pot. Or do not keep the pot. Either is fine.

You are able to give an ending one honest minute, and sixty seconds in front of a dead plant has never once been a sentimental thing for a man to do. 2 Samuel 12:23 says I shall go to him, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a man at a sill before he picks anything up.