Some flowers only grow from corpses.
She must have thought it was symbolic, but it was disgusting to me.
How can I even begin to explain to a four year old that shell never see her mommy again?
I dont even know how to explain it to myself.
If Id died instead, Im sure my wife would have known the right things to say.
Death wasnt a mystery to her like it was to me.
She told me that a persons life force never really goes away: it only changes form.
I told Ellie that mom was a flower now, and she asked me which one.
All of them, Id said.
Shes every beautiful thing in the whole world.
It looks like someone made a deliberate incision, stuck a seed inside, and sewed it back up.
Some flowers only grow from corpses.
She must have thought it was symbolic, but it was disgusting to me.
They asked me if the mortician should take them out, and I said yes.
We can plant them!
she squealed, although of course I couldnt tell her where they really came from.
I let her keep the seeds and helped her plant them in the backyard.
Mom has turned into the flowers now, I told Ellie.
Its what happens to everyone… sooner or later.
Id never seen anything like them before.
Blue and purple ones like galaxies being born, and great red trumpets burning brighter than living flame.
Id gotten used to those little shrieks lately.
Someday I knew Id find the right words, but until then the flowers were hope.
I just hadnt counted on how convincing a hope theyd be.
That one already has her hair.
And look over here!
Hair and teeth had started to grow by the third week.
And it didnt stop there either.
Fingers, starting with the bone which sprouted a new layer of muscle each day.
A heart, swelling like a ripening fruit and beating where it hung below the flower.
I was absolutely horrified, but Ellie was ecstatic.
Something miraculous was happening, and I didnt think it was my place to stop it.
Hope can be more even blinding than despair though, and I didnt see my mistake until last night.
Id just gotten up to use the bathroom when I passed by Ellies room and found the door open.
The whole backyard was alive.
The ground looked like a storm-tossed ocean, dirt teaming with masses of squirming, unseen roots.
The plants had all converged on one spot where they formed a giant, pulsing bud.
I screamed, charging toward the mass.
A hand caught me by the wrist before Id taken two steps.
A fully formed hand my wifes hand but she would never keep me from our daughter.
I wrestled with the plant, ripping the hand cleanly free from where it sprouted.
Ellie didnt look like she was in pain.
As peaceful as my wife when shed gone but Ellie wasnt gone too.
My daughter wasnt breathing.
Her heart had stopped.
The whole garden was dead by morning, shriveling without its corpse like a drought stricken field.
Ellie died that night too, but I know she isnt gone.
It seems like death is the end, but I understand now that its just a transformation.
