Heaven-Scented Departure

 

But I have all, and abound:

I am full, having received . . .

the things which were sent from you,

an odour of a sweet smell,

a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God.

                                                                                    — Philippians 4:18

 

            A friend's mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness at age 81.

 

            She came to her daughter's home to die.

 

            There would have been enough money to put her in a nursing home or retirement center. Nobody would have thought a thing of it, if the family had decided to pay professionals to ease the transition and conserve their time and energy.

 

            But my friend wanted to be her mother's final caregiver. She wanted to do it, even though she had no nursing experience and had never done anything like this before.

 

            Doctors said her mother didn't have long. So my friend determined to make the best of a bad situation. She went to part-time on her job, and transformed her living room into, well, a dying room.

 

            It was a cheerful dying room, make no mistake. The hospital bed was surrounded by chairs, for lots of expected visitors. There was a lot of light in the room, just steps from the kitchen.

 

            My friend's whole family helped make it happen. But most of the burden still fell to the daughter: making meals, shampooing her mother's hair, lifting her, dispensing her medications, changing the sheets, questioning the medical people, handling the endless paperwork, and on and on.

 

            The dying lady made just one simple request: she wanted her daughter to plant sweet peas outside the window, where she could watch them grow.

 

            My 40-something friend is not an avid gardener. She had never done much more than watering pre-planted, store-bought pots. She didn't even know what sweet peas are. They're an old-fashioned flower you don't see too often in people's designer yards these days.

 

            But, glad to have something tangible and easy that she could do to please her mom, she bought the seeds for 79 cents and planted them in plain sight of the window nearest her mother's bed.

 

            Under her mom's coaching, my friend coaxed the seeds to germination and kept the roots cool with a little mulch. She rigged up a string trellis for the vines to climb.

 

            The weeks passed. Together, mother and daughter watched the vines spread out across the trellis. The tendrils were holding on tight . . . just like my friend and her mother.

 

            The leaves unfurled. The vines grew. The trellis filled up. The illness got worse.

 

            Finally, one summer day, the mother died.

 

            My friend came home from the funeral exhausted. She saw her mother's empty bed. She grabbed the pillow and sniffed her mother's fading scent. Painful reality slammed into her. The good front she had put up suddenly collapsed. She threw herself on the bed, and burst into horrendous sobs.

 

            "Mom! Mom! You're dead! You're gone! I'll never see you again!" She sobbed some more.

 

            Finally, blinking through tears, she looked outside. Her cried-out eyes focused on the sweet pea plant. She saw that the first flower had blossomed.

 

            It was big.

 

            It was white.

 

            It was perfect.

 

            She ran out and found that it had a scent that could only be described as . . . heavenly.

 

            She cried some more. This time, they were tears of joy.

 

            Job well done, the flower was saying.

 

            That's spiritual economics. The sweet peas had cost just pennies but gave her mother great pleasure in the midst of suffering. The daughter had made a relatively small sacrifice of time and effort for her mother in those last days, but the simple little acts of love are the ones that mean everything.

 

            Doing what's right. What comes naturally. Expressing love, bringing joy.

 

            It's the fullness of a summer morning, the promise of a bud about to burst wide open, the persistence of a vine climbing eagerly up, higher, toward the light.

 

            Isn't that how the Gardener wants us to be? Stretching toward the light. Growing. Expanding. And yet still holding on tight.

 

            Then, when you're ready . . . you bloom.

 

            Later, a friend told her that in the language of flowers, the sweet pea means "delicate pleasures and departure."

 

            Departure leads to arrival. The flower signalled that her mother had arrived in a better place. She knew it was true.

 

            That's the Gardener's perfect timing.

 

            And you can count on it, Sweet Pea. †