You see, thistles come with homegrown protection, intended to keep animals from making a meal of them.  Those prickly little things that you see all around it are just that, prickly little things that hurt like the devil when touched, no matter how gentle that touch may be.  But I’ve always heard that if you approach a thistle with confidence and firmly grasp it, the sharp, painfully pointy leaves and spines will collapse under your fingers and you will avoid being skewered by the infernal thing.  And since I just happen to have about ten acres of field as my front yard, complete with several accommodating thistles, I decided to put the theory to the test.  After all, wouldn’t that make for a great blog?  Firmly approach something like grief with a decisive frame of mind and you can overcome any obstacle it may cast in your path . . . (kindly read that with a heavy dose of sarcasm).  Think of the dedication to the craft that must be possessed, the willingness to put one’s own fingers in jeopardy for the greater good.  Okay.  Maybe not.

Whatever the motivation, I chose a sunny morning when the grass in the field was fairly dry, stopped the van about three quarters of the way down the drive that’s two tenths of a mile long, and spotted my guinea pig.  It wasn’t too far from the asphalt which was good since I rarely ever wear shoes that cover my toes once the weather is warm enough . . . if I even wear shoes.  So, with camera in hand, I carefully picked my way through the tall grass that will soon be bales of hay, watching for the possible snake that’s waiting to nibble on my toes and give me heart failure, and approached my target.  First there was the picture taking, followed by the observation that this is a beautiful yet evil looking creature.  Very gingerly, I touched one of the spines and immediately came to the realization that I might not be as courageous as I thought I was.  Defying what I now questioned as truth—that the firm grasping of said thistle would allow me to prevail—I gently placed my hand around it and slowly began to close it.

That was my second mistake.  My first was believing I could do this.

After several minutes of tentative thistle touching (which sounds absolutely awful in retrospect), I found that if I slid my hand up from the bottom of the stalk, the spines actually did flatten against the bloom and the leaves caressed the plant . . . and I could hold it without bleeding all over everything.  It took some doing . . . and some time . . . and a good deal of self-convincing, but I finally found a way in which I could hold a thistle.

And therein lies the moral to the story.  Despite my firm belief that I could deal with a thistle, the actual thistle caused my resolve to waiver significantly.  Only after a great deal of contemplation was I able to reach my goal and then not as I had originally planned.  Losing someone we love can generate that same set of circumstances.  No matter how much we plan or how prepared we might think we are, the actual loss can throw us into a tailspin.  To quote Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray” and loss and the grief that follows are masters at undoing even the most well laid plan.  Those pesky thistles may prick your fingers, but grief will prick your heart and soul and the scars it leaves will never truly heal.  We just have to learn how to hold it so we can minimize the pain.

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