To Understand the Cycle of Life — Plant Something
It took two Catholic nuns to explain this to me.
I was, what I believe to be, the typical innocent child. I loved my parents and my siblings. I had a great extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and such. I came to understand early enough that people grew old and died — I knew this from the funerals and funeral home visitations of more distant relatives, none of whom I got to know very well, or at all, in the earliest years of my life.
Those people, to my naive mind, were different. They were old. They were sick. They were victims of terrible bad luck.
They weren’t me and my family.
The concept of losing someone in my tight circle of love was incomprehensible.
I carried myself around in my delusional bubble for quite a while.
In my early twenties, I started to date a man I had known in my high school years. We were young, extremely energetic, active in every way possible in our young, strong, enthusiastic bodies. We formed a tight couple who did everything together in life. We were, to most onlookers, the ideal couple.
And we were. Really. In due time we married — it was the natural course of events. Our relationship blossomed even more. We still exuded all the energy of youth, even into our thirties.
Until, one day, he lost that energy. Quickly, suddenly, inexplicably, his world (and by extension, mine) changed. It took doctors months to put a label on it — Acute Myeloid Leukemia. If you know the horror of this diagnosis, you need no words to describe it. If you don’t, just take my word for it that this disease — that steals life one ugly inch at a time — is an unforgiving monster that crushes the body and spirit.
He fought this battle for a little over a year — and then he lost his fight.
Just a few years before his death I had lost my father to a stroke. Just a few months after his death, I lost my mother to lung cancer.
The incomprehensible reality of life — and death — was planted squarely on my doorstep.
I’ll never be able to explain how I walked through those days. I kept my job — apparently continuing to be a satisfactory employee. I spent small amounts of time with family. I had a tenuous relationship with the church of my youth. The world outside my small bubble grew steadily smaller — and I didn’t mind.
One Easter morning, I attended a community sunrise breakfast at my family church. It seemed harmless enough. As I sat there with my pancakes, alone as I recall, two Catholic nuns from the local Catholic Church came over and asked if they could sit with me.
They could see in my eyes that I carried a burden of sadness — they said as much. It wasn’t long before the general story of my life and my losses came out.
Although certainly not well-versed in the Catholic faith, I was open to sharing my heart with these two exceedingly kind ladies. I couldn’t see a path out of my despair, but I found myself more than willing to share at that point than I had at any time previous.
I wasn’t looking for answers. I was pretty sure there were none to be found.
They listened, saying very little to interrupt the flow of my words. When I had exhausted myself, one of the nuns took my hand. She looked into my eyes and spoke gently. Her words were few, but the meaning struck me as nothing else had before. She said:
“Go home and plant a seed. Watch it grow. Watch it blossom. And, in due time, watch it wither and die. It will help you understand.”
It sounded simple, almost simplistic. Actually, as I write these words, it sounds that way even still.
But, it worked.
I went home and planted a seed.
My heart opened just a bit when that first small stem of a flower elbowed its way out of the earth. I followed the life cycle of my little flower. I struggled to help it grow, to keep it alive when it seemed to be reaching the end of its life cycle.
And when, in the natural course of time, it did indeed wither and die — I planted another one.
Plant a seed.
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