After our beloved cat, Cosmo, was killed tragically in our driveway by a neighbor a couple of years ago, poppies started springing up from the rock.
Directly over the spot where his body had lay, they grew like an unplanned memorial the earth showed up to, quietly, reverently.
None of us spoke about them.
We all just glanced over any time we walked from the car, remembered that day, nodded,
and knew.
No one had planted them.
They had never been there before.
They just grew seemingly from out of nowhere;
Clusters of them.
The pain of losing that cat I had loved so fiercely was an indescribable blow.
When the neighbor had come to tell me about it, the wail I let out felt like it came from outside of my body; From somewhere in the dirt, down below.
For weeks, every time I had to walk outside into the driveway, I purposefully lifted my chin, unable to stand the thought of letting my eyes rest on the place where we had last had him,
But then those poppies came
– beauty for our brokenness –
and little by little, life and smiles came back to our home.
I always felt like those poppies were the work of God,
reaching down and decorating the painful place –
The place I couldn’t have even bear to look without some kind of newness in it;
A splash of color,
Orange and green lace.
Today has been a lonely day of mothering.
I hate to admit that those kinds of days are feeling more frequent.
I asked one teenage daughter to go with me somewhere.
She said she didn’t want to go.
I sighed, and started to sink into my feelings, when I decided maybe it would help, even just a small amount, to open up the front door, and to let in some light.
Start small, and start slow.
That’s when I saw it –
That cluster of poppies like a perfect bouquet had returned for yet another year,
and I was reminded that all things, even my life and my own future, are being made new;
Even in the midst of what might look, at the time, like pain and despair;
Our hard, rocky ground,
When I’m feeling most alone.
Those golden petals had come to tell me that there is growth and beauty in the hard parts, too.
The breeze made them sway slightly, and whispered to also say to you:
Be encouraged today that whatever you are feeling isn’t the end.
Something else is coming for you soon.
Right now, maybe it’s just a tiny seed of a thing,
germinating in a place that feels too hard for you to look,
stretching and unfurling when you don’t yet notice it is starting to bloom.
It has happened to me time and time again, and it will happen for you.
Your pain is not unnoticed, when your losses and aches leave you wailing from a place that feels outside of you.
Even the earth below aches with you.
I think those delicate flowers grew through hard ground and rock to say this to me, and to even just one of you, too:
For so many of us, these have been such difficult years,
but your burst of color is coming,
And you will see it’s been watered by tears.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
