40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#36

36. In order to get fruit, flowers have to give their lives.


I can't really believe these posts are coming up right when they are. I wrote and numbered these last year, and this year am simply taking them in the order they come and pondering them, then writing devotionals about them. "In order to get fruit, flowers have to give their lives." Who in the blazes thought of this piece of wisdom?!
That was me, I guess. Last year, when both my husband and my mother were still alive. I watched the petals fall, as they have fallen in this past week from my old June apple tree, papering the garden underneath with snowy fragrance, and I mused, "Hmmm, we talk about the flowers that never fade, but in fact, if the petals didn't fall, there would never be apples."
I thought there was a good metaphor for life in there. The things you love so much in your life fall away, and you grieve them, but maybe there will later be fruit, even from that loss.
Yada yada.
It's so easy to write about. . . when it's not happening. It's even possible to taste and share and rejoice (bittersweetly) in the growth of compassion and generosity that you discover when, for instance, a much-beloved husband is finally set free from a long, torturous illness. But when you have just begun to rise again from that long draining and exhaustion, and then you lose a vital mother who came from a long line of people who lived 90 years and more and was in no way ready to go. . . what fruit could be worth that? It's also possible to have blossoms fall before they are mature, and produce no fruit at all.
Then again. . .It's not true that she was in no way ready to die. In the only way that matters, she was always ready to die. That is, she was in the path and never left it and never turned back and never gave up. She has arrived at the Center of Centers. And she certainly produced fruit, a hundred-fold at least. It is no exaggeration to say that there are likely 10,000 people in this world whose lives were directly blessed by the touch of my mother. Among whom, I am chief.
I can only thank the Great Gardener for the blossoms, the fruit, the strong arms, and the sturdy trunk of this tree, so short a time among us, so steady in taking up nutrients, breathing in the life-giving breezes, drinking in the rain, basking in the sun. God make me half that beautiful a tree! (Did I tell her that enough?)
Rest in the arms of God, Mommy. I miss you so much!