My Little Peace Lily

After the funeral, I acquired a peace lily. First, a little history on my green thumb or lack thereof. I have always aspired to be a gardener. I love to look out and see the flowers blooming and I love the thought of being self-sustaining and growing my own produce. In reality, I can’t keep a weed alive; even dandilions choose death. When the lily came home with me, I gave it a month and figured I would be tossing it out with the trash. Then it lived. It actually thrived. I would neglect it for a while, see it all sad in the corner, water it, and miraculously it would come back to life.

It became a thing. I almost felt like it was Mickey’s plant. It was my purpose to make sure this plant lived. When I would go out of town, I would have someone come over and water it (even though I barely did when I was home) and I actually thought about it when I was away. After the loss of Mickey, I felt like my purpose in life had been taken from me. For so long, every minute of my day was spent making sure he had everything he needed to live a healthy life and then he was gone and I was left with a lot of time on my hands and no one to care for. With the responsibility of this plant, it was almost like I had a second chance in life to take care of something (albeit on a lesser level).

Here we are, almost two years later, and the little peace lily is now a decent size, a staple in the corner of my bedroom. I catch myself looking at it some days thinking of how far we have both come. I guess there is a parallel between me and this plant. There was a point in my journey when I felt like I couldn’t find the strength to go on. If I didn’t have the people around me that cared for me the way I cared for this plant, it is possible that neither of us would be here right now.

I have learned that we have no control over how our story begins or ends. It is guaranteed that tomorrow morning the sun will rise and tomorrow night the sun will set. The journey of the sun is very predictable, but our life's story is not. Our story is a book full of blank pages waiting for us to write the script. Like my lily, I want to continue to fight to live. I have a story to tell. My life isn’t over. I want to live to care for another, even if it means pain is waiting at the end. Queen Elizabeth II said “Grief is the price we pay for love”. I guess if we all live long enough and allow ourselves, we will all experience grief a time or two.