Blooming for Death

 It was a beautiful spring evening and I was walking through the park. Petals were bursting from their buds and their perfume rode the breeze in the air. Often when I thought of spring, I thought of new life; new beginnings. This spring, however, only death was on my mind. The beauty of the flowers, the sound of the birds, the buzzing of the bees and the warm sunlight on my skin couldn’t help my dark thoughts as they pervaded my mind. 

I wondered why flowers were sent to dead people. Why did they mourn death with something so beautiful? What is beautiful about death? Nothing. You die and you decompose. You get maggots crawling out of your eyes. Your skin shrivels and turns grey and your bones turn to dust. There is nothing beautiful about that. So why take something so colorful, so lovely to every sense you possess, and make it so morbid? 

I reached the pond in the park. The water glittered with the sunlight and the ducks and koi swam peacefully as one. I stopped to stare at my reflection in the water. I looked nothing like myself. My thoughts had begun to show on the outside. A duck swam over my reflection, making it quiver and wave, distorting it to my true feelings. I looked up and saw families and lovers walking by the water. Laughter and conversation invaded my hearing span. I was angry, but I couldn’t blame them. It was hardly their fault that their happiness made me want to vomit. 

The breeze picked up and I watched a plastic bag roll across the grass. I felt more like that bag than I did with any other people in the park. The bag was alone, no one was chasing it even though it was being carried away by mother nature. It had served it’s purpose and then forgotten; just like me. I may as well be trash in the wind. 

People treated spring the same way they treated each other. There was something fascinating about the new and the fresh. Out with the old and in with the new as the saying goes. They fall in love for a while, then someone new comes along and you are left with nothing to remember them by other than a broken heart. This is how we treat our elderly. Once their purpose has been served and they are past their point of usefulness, we forget them. They become a burden to society and we put them up in homes to keep from having to care for them. We make ourselves feel better by visiting them once a month or so. 

Age is like seasons as well. The youth are the spring season, vibrant and blooming and full of life. Young adults are the summer season. The flowers have faded but the world is opened to adventure. Middle aged people are like fall. The beauty of spring and the possibilities of summer have passed and now you must prepare for winter. You must prepare because winter is cold, it is bitter. Everything dies and withers away. Just like people. 

Two days ago my mother passed away. When birth was all around us, my mother found death. I was grieving like I had grieved no other. There was a void in my spirit, a gaping hole sucking my happiness dry. The people around me were happy. Their spirits were intact. They were not grieving the loss of their best friend and role model. All was well in their world and they saw nothing on the outside to say otherwise about mine. But the spring atmosphere in the air made my stomach turn flips. It made me sick to see so much good in a world that was so vile. 

People that I hadn’t spoken to in years were calling me now. They were dropping by my house, uninvited, to pay their respects. They talked about how much they loved my mother. They praised her good works and raved about what a pure heart she had. The funny thing was, they weren’t around when she was alive. They had only been in her life for a short period, then they disappeared. It was then that I realized that people don’t love you when you’re alive. They only love you when you’re dead. 

What good did it do my mother for people to talk about how wonderful she was after she was dead? What good did it do me? I knew how amazing she was. So why did they feel the need to tell me over and over again about how much they loved and respected her? It was a vicious cycle going on and on. They came with their food and their memories, and I was left with nothing but emptiness when they left. 

I guess, in a way, this spring there was a new birth in my life…the birth of my new life. The life I once had melted with the winter snow. I would have to live a life I’ve never had to live before. This spring, I would have to learn to live with a gaping hole in my spirit. It was time to learn to walk again. It was time to learn to move forward. Sure, I had no clue how to go about that at the moment, but just like the birds falling to the ground in order to learn to fly, I would have to fall too. I would need to take that leap before I could fly. 

Out with the old and in with the new. My mother has left her mark upon this earth. She blossomed into the most beautiful flower one could imagine. But, like all flowers, her petals fell to the ground and her beauty faded into nothing more than a memory. We too will all begin to lose our petals one day. A day will come when we must let go and allow our last petal to fall to the ground. We must make room for the new flowers. The question is, how big will we blossom?