In retrospect, it was not a good day to artfully mutilate.

Today began with the news that someone close to me had died.

I guess to say Ed was close to me was a stretch; however, he and his wife owned the last house my ex-husband and I bought together.

Ed knew we couldn't afford a riding mower yet, and we needed one, having gone from a tiny square of grass to three acres. He came back and mowed for us for the first few weeks until we secured our own rider.

Ed was wonderful to our son, laughing at everything the four- and five- and six-year-old Hunter said as if each utterance was simultaneously the funniest and most clever thing he had ever heard.

Ed was a solid, dependable man who loved to work outside, who loved to build things or put things together or go out on his boat or enjoy the company of his family.

Ed was the second friend to leave us this year. Bill was the first. Bill was married to Marilyn, a former co-worker of mine, and Bill, like Ed, had been so good to my family. Bill had written a children's book and paid my son, then eight, to illustrate it. Bill, so ill with cancer at that point, had nonetheless commandeered the bail money to spring me from jail that terrible day last July.

This is getting mixed up in my head, but it was this jumble of thoughts that swarmed as I decided it was time to attack the bushes in the front yard.

I had been told to do it a week before by my aunts, and, since I don't pay rent on this house where my grandparents raised a family, I figure a few chores here and there are nothing in comparison.

Ed's passing this morning was the predominant thought on Bush One. Bush Two was Bill. Bush Three became Johnny Flynn, the grandfather who had lived in the house across the street from where I was savagely cutting, the grandfather I secretly adopted as my own before I developed a relationship with the busy, distracted man my grandfather had been.

The hedge clippers were rusty and reluctant. Manhandling was necessary.

The polite Clip, Clip morphed into Rip, Slash.

Bush Four turned into the lost relationships with my siblings, two of whom went to Chicago this weekend to see Lollapalooza together. Could I have gone? No way. Did they even think to ask? No way again.

My youngest sister, whom I had seen earlier that day, who went out of her way to hug my son, then cut a wide swath around me when I reached for my own hug.

Bush Five was the final obstacle between me and Bush Victory. I stopped to survey my work and realized that, if bushes were fingernails and I was a compulsive nailbiter on a binge, they would probably look like these nubbins. Bitten to the quick.

It was hot out there. Very hot. I was in my swimsuit, with towel tied around my waist, a vicious case of Swimmer's Ear ravaging my canals, sweat diving off me as if I were a burning building. My eyes felt like the only dry thing in my control.

It was Bush Five that wrenched the power from me. Bush Five opened the floodgates.

Bush Five remains untouched. There are some things I'm not ready to attack yet.