Love, Hate and a Hippo
At Cassie’s memorial I told everyone, “Sunflowers are Cassie’s favorite flower.” I waxed on about how their symbolism is so beautiful, how they represented something so bright and joyful just like Cassie was a joyous light in our lives.
Cassie didn’t always like sunflowers though.
In fact, I made her hate them for a long time. A few months after we started dating in high school, prom started coming around corner. So I was stuck with the chore of asking her to go with me. “But how?!” I wondered. Well, early in our relationship I was on a kick of buying her stuffed animals. So I wound up running to Toys R Us to get her a new one for this occasion—a little blue hippo. I knew flowers should be involved, so I picked out some big, sunny sunflowers.
I didn’t ask in a particularly fantastic way. I set up the stuffed animal with a sunflower in one hand and a note in the other that read, “PROM?” I knocked on her door, then ran behind some bushes. When she answered it, she yelled out “YES!!!” I appeared from around the landscaping with a handful of the other sunflowers and she told me that she would love to go to prom… with the cute hippopotamus who just asked her. I had some words with Bart the hippo, but we arranged for me to go with Cassie while he would stay home; everyone was happy.
At least, everyone was happy until Cassie got home from a trip to New York a week and a half after I asked her. See, after I gave the flowers to her, she put them in a little vase in her bedroom. As lovely and perky as they were when she left for the Big Apple, they were wilted and rotten when she got back. There are few flowers that are as stunning as a sunflower. But there are also few that can smell anywhere near as terrible when they go bad. Cassie told me she covered every square inch of her bedroom with Febreeze but the smell stunk up the place for days afterwards.
She couldn’t stand sunflowers for a long while. But her love of sunflowers was, at the very least, replaced by her love for that stuffed animal. In fact, Bart the hippo was still around to give her company when I worked night shifts.
Following the Sun
I also mentioned at Cassie’s memorial that we always wanted to see a field of sunflowers. Since then people have asked if I ever made it out to one.
Well, I tried for a while. But the farms that open their fields in the spring had closed for the season right after I started looking. There was supposed to be an amazing field of swamp sunflowers (Helianthus augustofolias) on the northwest shore of Lake Jesup. But when I went there, I found that it was apparently a disappointing year. Due to heavy rains, only a fraction of the usual wildflowers had grown. On top of that, about half of the swamp sunflowers there had already dropped their petals and turned to seed-heads. (There was a beautiful sunset, anyways.)
Then, just this last weekend, my family all met up at a farm in Elkin, FL. It had a massive corn-maze, funnel cake, a ton of animals for the nieces to pet, a corn pit, a pumpkin patch, and, you guessed it, sunflower fields. After getting lost in the mazes a couple times, we took a hay ride out to see the flower fields. (Unfortunately I didn’t get very good pictures.)
Were they beautiful? Yes. Were there hundreds or thousands of flowers reaching towards heaven, reflecting the beauty and brightness of God right back at him? Yes. Was it everything I hoped it would be and more? Definitely not.
Light Diluted
There are some days when awesome things are truly awe-inspiring. But there are some days where it feels like the earth could split in two and I still wouldn’t be impressed.
Life is always like that, grieving or not. You might expect seasons of mourning to be filled with days more like the second kind. But with all the other emotions that are tied up in it, I find myself going between both extremes even more. Some days I can’t help but pay attention to all the life in this world that Cassie is missing out on (or that I’m missing out on experiencing with Cassie)—that leads to sadness, and a lot of times, to a deeper appreciation and wishing to savor the moments even more. Some days I’m left feeling like those experiences which should be incredible and super meaningful are just empty.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.
Matthew 6
Jesus says that what our eyes are set on—the world around us, heaven, the needy people—determines the condition of our heart. So if we choose rightly, the people we choose to relate with (e.g. my awesome family), the experiences we choose to dive into (e.g. going to a sunflower field), the thoughts we choose to think (e.g. thoughts of Cassie and heaven), all these things should bring us light. Setting our eyes on lovely things should make our hearts light.
But that’s not always the case.
To the pure, all things are pure, but to [Judaizers], nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.
Titus 1
The words of Paul speak to the manner in which our hearts affect our perspective. If our hearts are full of light, then the things we taste, see and hear are not viewed as inherently good or evil. But if our hearts are dark from the get-go, then the things we put into our bodies and minds affect the deepest aspects of our self-image. A heart burdened with guilt (or in my case with grief) will suck the life out of experiences that should be life-giving.
I’m not saying I didn’t have fun playing in the corn maze with my nieces or seeing my 18-month-old niece attack some funnel cake. But as I was beating my way through one of the sunflower fields, dodging the hundreds of honeybees everywhere, carrying a scared niece on my back, and sweating profusely, I couldn’t help but think it wasn’t the end to the adventure I expected. Sure, doing objectively wonderful things with wonderful people was better than sitting at home alone. But then, the thing I thought would be most wonderful was very far from it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that grief sucks. It sucks the life out of a field of flowers. It sucks the joy out of a beautiful day. It sucks the light out of your heart. And that sucks the light out of how we see everything… sometimes. Putting light back in through your eyes helps—sometimes a lot, but sometimes it’s like shining a light into a bottomless pit. I wish there were a switch I could flip, turning the light in my heart back on. But as far as I can tell, there is no such thing. We just have to wait for the clouds to pass, then try to enjoy those sunny days even more.
I guess what I’m also saying is, it didn’t quite feel like I checked “field of sunflowers” off the list. So expect a part two for this adventure. Like a sunflower, sometimes you just can’t stop looking for the light.
