The Peace Lily

In December of 2018, I separated from my husband and Lizzy and I moved in with my older sister. As a welcome-home gift, she gave me a white pot with the word “Hope” in black letting across the front. She said she thought it was an appropriate sentiment for what I was going through. I didn’t disagree. I went to IKEA, bought a shade-loving peace lily, planted it in the pot, and placed the pot in indirect sun under the skylight in my bathroom.

I bought many other plants that day: plants that Lizzy helped me put into pots in the sparse warm days of late February and early March. Lizzy was my little gardener. She gardened with me from the time she could crawl. She adored moving soil from one place to another and helping me tuck the plants into their earthy beds. Like all the plants in my room, Lizzy helped me pot the peace lily.

Although all the plants did well, the peace lily thrived. Given no more fertilizer or water than the others, placed in no more advantageous a location, the peace lily multiplied its dark waxy leaves, growing larger by the day. When I arrived home from the hospital after losing Lizzy, the peace lily, like all of the trees outside, had burst into bloom.

Today, it has four blossoms leaking white pollen onto the dark green of its leafy undercarriage. The largest blossom is turning green, past its prime. Every time I walk into my bathroom, I stare at this incongruous and inexplicable symbol of life and hope. And every time, it seems glaringly out of place, as though these concepts have no appropriate function in my life.

What does it mean that the peace lily thrived as Lizzy died? Does it mean anything? Is it some fabulously insufficient reminder to have hope in the face of tragedy? If so, it is not having the desired effect. When my mind travels down that path, it makes me want to smash the pot and the lily into pieces. What sort of hope can exist in a world that can take away my innocent two-year-old without warning?

Then there are days when I think maybe the peace lily isn’t so heavily laden with meaning and metaphor. Maybe the peace lily is just a plant that happened to do well at the time that the worst thing that could have happened to me happened.

And, finally, there are days when I feel that the maybe the peace lily isn’t any of the above. Maybe it’s just the fact that this is one more thing that I have surrounding me that was touched by Lizzy. Her little toddler fingers, full of life, helped me to pot this plant. It’s not this big, burdensome reminder guilting me into feeling emotions that I just can’t feel right now. No: it’s just another object that Lizzy infused with her love and light. And for that reason alone, I will let it keep growing.