In my current season of reflection, I have carried a sense of loss. Initially, I thought it was the memories of my father and mother, lingering with the acute awareness of their absence. It felt like more, yet there was nothing tangible I could link to the emotional baggage. Yesterday, I got the news that mum had passed earlier in the week. The baggage I had been carrying spilled open, and with it, my understanding of my feelings came into focus.
The simple flower arrangement at dinner with friends set Life’s whispers in motion. I began to appreciate the lives of each generation. We start as buds, and then, reaching our peak, we blossom and flourish, even as the next generation begins to stand tall as a bud of hope for future generations.
I am thankful for the gifts those before me left for me and my generation. We are better because of you. In your strengths and weaknesses, we received the fruits of sacrifice and dedication. We learned about compassion through your words and embrace. We understood patience by the way you endured our excursions in life. We pursued love because of the ways we were loved. It was not always personal; you embraced friends as if they were your own.
My greatest gift to the future is the seeds I plant and nurture, the buds created in love and hope. The results are not because I “designed gardens and parks and planted a variety of fruit trees in them,” (Ecclesiastes 2:5) they are because together with Divinity, the next generation responded to the call to grow and contribute in their unique way. Each metaphorical bud comes from participating and collaborating with Divinity in the divine process of creation, birth, and nurture.
The light of a new morning is an invitation to celebrate through our tears. Mum followed Divinity’s lead to accept with grace and embrace without conditions, always leaving me with hope and the memory of twinkling eyes. Her example in full bloom is my model. It’s time to blossom for others and myself.
