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Caryl’s First Rose

I see a little girl dressed the way I used to dress/be dressed at Easter in a mid-western city, but she was a thousand or so miles away. I see her picking flowers maybe wearing a bonnet, after all it is Easter-time. I see her holding the banister rail as she navigates downward to the yard filled with flowers or eating chocolate laughing with her brother.

Today the first rose bud bloomed on a bush given to that same little girl’s dad, commemorating her passing last October. It is a lone flower right now, but the promise is it will have more flowers than you can pick.

When we watch our children, we never think of the reality of the future. It is all fantasy and hope. We see them graduating from high school and/or college. We imagine them getting married or becoming parents themselves. We see them changing the world lying in their cribs sleeping.

If we allow the fleeting moment of reality, we quickly shoe-it away with a fear the thought might bring bad luck. I know Caryl’s dad did this. He lived/lives with regret of not doing this or not doing that… If he knew her life would be cut short by cancer, things would have been different.The truth is we have to give our loved ones our love, while they are here. We have to cherish the moments with the knowledge they are moments, not filled with fear but with freedom. The freedom of giving away all you have, because you have no worry of tomorrow. This is where our hope must meet faith. Simply put, our loved ones, they are blessings.

Caryl’s first rose bloom will last until it withers away; picking it or leaving it on the bush, does not change the fact it was here and it was first. So I will take a picture of it to preserve it’s beauty in a way that will allow revisiting, ever mindful it is representing a visit. This place, this Earth is a stopping over point.  Hold her hand a little tighter, enjoy her laughter a little longer and appreciate her beauty with a little more intensely.