Daffodils (Reprised)

The weather has been warm enough that the daffodils have started to bloom again. As I approach Lizzy’s birthday 13 days from now, I watch the bright yellow trumpets of the daffodils flutter in the breeze and memories, like echoes, begin to dance before me. I can see Lizzy leaning down to smell the odorless bulbs. I can hear her sweet voice saying proudly, “flao-were.” I can see her picking daffodil after daffodil to cradle gently in the canopy of her pink, plastic play stroller.

Last year, daffodils were the only flower that emerged before Lizzy died. They were the only flower in bloom during her 2nd birthday party. They were the tantalizing promise of all the flowers yet to come: the hint of the beauty the summer held, ripening, in trust for us.

Last year, Lizzy and I played outside on every warm day, and I watched the slow unfolding of spring with absolute impatience. I couldn’t wait to share the colors, smells, sounds, and words of summer with Lizzy, whose development in those last months before her birthday had progressed at the speed of a bullet train. I imagined showing her the numberless blossoms of the massive cherry tree on the side of the house. I couldn’t wait to teach her words like “bird,” “grass,” “sun,” and “deer.” But the ground was cold, the grass was brown, the trees were bare, and the only flowers brave enough to show their faces were daffodils.

When I returned home from the hospital on April 6, it seemed the entire earth had burst into bloom. While Lizzy lay dying, confined to concrete block walls, the grass had turned green, the cherry blossoms pink, the air golden, and the trees outside my window were snowing tiny, ivory flowers all over the driveway. Lizards scampered, snatching their blue tails behind them into the laurel bushes; birds performed endless impromptu concerts, and earthworms made their slow, epic journey across the flagstone pathway to reach the grass forest beyond.

It was like Lizzy’s life had drained out of her and into the world.

For months, all I could feel was rage. Unmitigated, just, and perfect rage. At the time, my only comfort dwelt in the fact that although Lizzy had died before I could show these things to her, Cecilia would in time to reach an age where I could share them with her instead.

Now, I do not know if Cecilia will ever be able to see a flower.

I suppose I have a lot of reasons to be angry or sad or self-pitying. But I no longer feel that it matters. I don’t see the daffodils in front of me and want to rip them from the brown and cold ground. Instead, I see a flower that Lizzy loved, which will, in a matter of weeks, die and not be seen again until next year. I see a flower that Cecilia can’t smell or see but will be able to touch and perhaps form some kind of mental image about. I see a flower that I have seen every year of my life but that, like so many other things, never mattered much until Lizzy cared about it.

And I guess that’s what I have to focus on more than anything else. I have taken almost everything that I have and everything that I am for granted for most of my life, and there is simply no room in my heart for that anymore. It’s no longer about what I don’t have or what I missed out on or what I may never have.

I did nothing to deserve the lives of Lizzy and Cece, and yet these lives have been given to me. The total vulnerability and absolute surrender of self that I have witnessed and experienced from both of these children is a gift so precious, it cannot be counted. More, it does not come with a promise or guarantee of longevity. I have no way of knowing how long Cecilia will be with me or I will be with her or my family or the world. We all simply live in the delusion that we will be here tomorrow precisely in order to make the problem of existence and death more comfortable and more manageable. It is the great human lie in which we all participate so that we can live life without fear and despair crippling every minute. It is a lie in which I still find myself participating, sometimes because I want to believe in the lie, sometimes because it is more convenient, and sometimes because I am simply too afraid to live in the truth 100% of the time.

But, you know, I think it’s okay to live in the lie. I think it’s what we’ve always done. I think to do otherwise is to break your brain against the very firm walls of the inescapable and unexplainable boundaries of human life. I think it’s okay that tomorrow, all I choose to worry about is going to mass, doing paperwork, spending time with Cecilia, and cooking dinner.

It’s okay as long as I remember that nothing will ever be more important than the human lives that have been entrusted to me. It’s okay as long as I live my life in service to this recognition and surrender. And it’s okay to be gentle with myself in the process. To allow myself to feel sad and hopeful and afraid and alive when I see a daffodil in bloom. It’s okay to allow Lent to remind me that I am dust and to dust I shall return. And, in the meantime, to decide what sort of alchemy or magic or mystery that dust will achieve before the end.