The History of a Day

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

-John O’Donohue

The first time I took Natalie to visit Doris, I didn’t recognize her. I stepped into her hospital room where she was sleeping soundly and then quickly stepped out. I was sure that this person was not Doris. The stranger in the bed looked quite a bit older than the Doris we knew, older and wrinklier. Our Doris may have been 83, but you would not have guessed it. Our Doris was vibrant and full of life.

So I hid in the hallway and called my husband to verify that I had in fact remembered the room number correctly. He said that I was spot on and that it was okay to wake Doris. So I crept back in and decided to check the cards on the wall. If just one of them said her name, then I would have to believe that this was Doris. I fumbled a bit in this endeavor and a card fell to the ground, and suddenly the woman in the bed opened her eyes to catch us snooping about.

Doris recognized us immediately and broke into a grin. Most especially, Natalie made her smile. She smiled at Natalie and Natalie smiled back and they formed a perfect, wordless bond that made Natalie kind of crazy. Everyday, from that point forward, we had to visit. Long before I was ready to go, I would find Natalie waiting in the car, strapped into her car seat, waiting with a bouquet of gardenias in a tin-foil vase on her lap.

Doris called Natalie “Her little flower girl.” And Natalie wasn’t sure she wanted to hold Doris’ hand, but she was delighted to eat her cherry Jello. And Natalie really couldn’t grasp the fact that Doris was dying, as much as I tried to prepare her. Even when Doris did die, and I told Natalie that we were going to a funeral for Doris, Natalie responded with cheer. “Good! Than she will come to church!” Trying to temper her enthusiasm I said, “Yes, Doris will be at church, but she will be dead.” This wasn’t a problem for Natalie, “Then God can carry her there,” she said.

So this was our eucharist of the ordinary for two weeks: five gardenia bushes that burst into fragrant white just as Doris neared the end of her life. I never ceased to be amazed at how those bushes went into overdrive, producing bouquet after bouquet, day after day. Now that Doris is gone, I can scarcely muster a scrawny bouquet for the blue and white china vase in my kitchen. But during those weeks of anguished waiting, the flowers just kept offering themselves up, illuminating the horizon of life, where everything is clear and can only be taken as gift.

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