Accepting the death of a child is hard. Seeing hope in death is even more difficult. A recent experience with ailing flower bulbs helped me learn that finding hope in death comes when we’re able to view burial of someone we love as planting with the expectation of seeing new life emerge. 

For four years, I had neglected my Amaryllises to tend to greater needs. The plants were surviving, if not thriving, on their own. But feeling a void created by Maggie’s loss more keenly in my birthday week and sensing the first fresh breath of Fall, I walked to the bulb bed with a spade in gloved hands. I had already enlarged the garden spot with more dirt in anticipation of the work. Today, I had only to dig, split each offspring from the mother bulb, then replant them separately. An easy and satisfyingly therapeutic task.

Amaryllis

I savored the flowers’ history as I pushed aside soil. These bulbs had survived multiple transfers through the years. My sister Julie owned them first and gave them to our mother. Mom had planted them beneath a tree in her Sumrall yard. They grew along with her grandchildren who played beside them. When failing health forced us to move Mom, I rescued then planted them in my yard. Survivor is a good name for the flowers and the women who owned them in turn. With one storied layer enfolding another, like the onion-shaped bulbs, our lives had all seen circumstances transition us through challenges too numerous to count. Witnessing the emergence of those dazzling red blooms each spring provided a testimony to new life arising from cold, dormant ground.

Hope has been a recurring theme in my quiet time lately. I’m seeking the promise of it in every nook and cranny of scripture. It is, after all, one of Paul’s “top three”. On par with faith as runners-up only to love in I Corinthians 13:13. In leaving the question of “why” for “what next”, hope takes the lead as a guide from darkness into a new place of light. But we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience: and patience, experience; and experience, hope. (Romans 5:3-5). Spurgeon says, “This passage can only be fully understood by those who have had it written in capital letters on their own hearts.”

As the final spadeful of dirt was pushed aside last week, joy quickly turned to sorrow. The plants were wasting away, being eaten alive by some unseen predator. Devastated and raw with grief-strained emotions, my first instinct was to throw them away and start with a new crop. Phil listened to my distress and encouraged me to seek help from an expert. After inspecting several bulbs, the master gardener pronounced them infected with a fungus. The good news was probable recovery with proper treatment. We clipped away the offending foliage and bathed the bulbs with medicine and prayers. I had only to put them back into the ground. And wait for spring.

Planting is but burying with hope. We find comfort and nurturing while we are temporarily earthbound knowing we will again reach heavenward. And after we commit to dirt what we cherish, we find holes in our heart filled with fresh hunger for eternity. It’s a sweet paradox that when we experience disappointment and loss, we gain new space, a larger bed, for more to be planted. “Hope is the tenant, not of a heart that was never broken, but of a heart that has been broken and healed again.” (Arnot)

For more on hope, read I Hope: Why Does God Let a Child Suffer?