Coming Up Calla Lilies

I’ve been cautious with roses for two years, simple because of the Japanese beetles.

While I’ve written about my concerns about Japanese beetles and the damage they cause to roses during the last two years–real and metaphorical–I don’t take to the old saying, “Everything’s coming up roses.”

I don’t plant my rose shrubs together, but feature most as a part of a garden.

I also don’t obsess with coming of the Japanese beetles in June, as I did last year. Remember, I’m relatively new to gardening, and just learned about ways to reduce Japanese beetles through research last winter and spring. I also moved several rose shrubs apart. This winter, I learned about the need for a hard cut.

Because of the concern about Japanese beetles, I’ve looked to other plants, mostly native.

The trigger in my mind, which stimulates my PTSD (from witnessing Corrie’s cardiac arrest), blew up in the past two seasons at seeing roses eaten up by these creatures. I felt like I was letting Corrie die all over again. So many have attempted to convince me that Corrie’s death isn’t my fault.

I was supposed to protect and raise my daughter; not allow her to suffer.

I write all of this with a straight face, fully medicated again, after a bad setback last month.

I like roses. They’re beautiful, and I truly believe no plant takes their place.

I’ve had a different type of favorite flower, and it doesn’t bloom for as long, as a rose shrub will. My knock out roses will bloom from late April until frost. My Calla Lilies simply take longer to make their appearance, beginning in early to late May.

Less than two days after Corrie graduated to heaven almost four years ago (on May 27), John, my husband, and father, George, came up with an idea for a memorial garden. Here I was stunned, and the morning after she died I heard a sound come out of me that can only be described, as a wail.

Brought up in a chicken fried and relax with coffee kind of Christianity (Methodism), I went from believing in god to a dream of punching him in the face. Now, this is deep. This is real and more important than any Sunday night football.

I truly believed it was god’s choice, because he didn’t deserve the capital letter in his name after our daughter’s death, to offer “his only son” to the cross. It was not my choice for him to take our daughter. I also knew god was a man because no woman would cause Mary, my great grandmother, and I to suffer in the loss of our child.

It is strange how I write all of this now with a straight face and without much emotion except to laugh with or about my therapist–as the combination of time, strong medication, the loss of shock after trauma, and a blunt and hard therapist, who I suspect likes a good Scotch; will shape you.

I haven’t stepped into a church in perhaps three years, but I’ve stepped into a garden. Keep in mind, when you’re raised for a long time with religion it doesn’t just leave. I’m still processing it. If I’d completely abandoned it, I’d consider god as nonexistent.

While I don’t consider roses as the “it flower/ shrub,” I consider it, like god, as a part of the story.

Everything might not come up roses, and that’s okay; but you might look around one day.

Then everything is “coming up Calla Lilies.”

I smile when I see a Calla Lily breaking the surface in its unique straight lines, spreading with the spots on its green leaves, or the true color of the first flower.

When I wrote between 31 to 60 poems in the six months after Corrie earned wings, I mentioned Calla Lilies for the first time in a poem called “If I Call You Juliet.” It was published by a brave and wonderful university student staff in Pakistan. (It has since been shut down.)

If from this earth,
     such a stalk grows and at
             its top, a balcony blossoms
                             for your angel feet to press upon,

a terrace built by 
Heaven's architects
with golden, black and purple Calla 
Lilies at the top 
over pink braided roses, and
sprigs from evergreen 
trees.  Red berries jut out from 
crevices between the corollas and greens.
The mountain laurels support their
weight and they never fade. 

Where your feet 
            composed of angels' dust
                    touch, are the softest grasses of
                                                    forests' floors.

I think of those students, someone’s children, and the world in which we find ourselves as “citizens.” I once told Hayes and Corrie, “I can’t say what our entire purpose is in this Earth, but while we’re here, we should perform good acts. It doesn’t mean someone will take advantage of you, or for you to let them get too close, but do good things.”

Calla Lilies are a native plant of Africa. They attract pollinators, bloom return each year, and make beautiful cut flowers. I have cut Calla Lily flowers, which last more than two weeks in an arrangement.

Everything has been coming up Calla Lilies, both literally and figuratively. When I walk through the gardens, I witness the white-spotted leaves popping up in places I don’t remember placing bulbs or seeds.

I may or may not publish more poems or a book, but I’ll continue to learn more and more about gardening.

I may or may not have another child, but, as of Friday, May 17; I’m beginning my journey to earn a doctorate of education in Educational Practice and Innovation, specializing in STEM (Science Technology Education and Math).

We might say everything’s coming up Calla Lilies, especially after I learned of my acceptance three days after my birthday.

I can’t complain too much.

R.A. Bridges