Yellow Flowers

At the end of the summer, the tree out back starts to shed and thousands and thousands of tiny yellow flowers cover the ground.

One morning, very early in the morning, I was sitting on the balcony off my room and Ronan came out to me.  For a good long time he sat on my lap, wrapped in a blanket, watching the bees work, the spider building her web, and yellow flowers falling from the branches.  He told me how happy he was to have a place like this where we could see so much.  He loves these yellow flowers and he quietly told me that he delights when he finds a bee on the balcony floor and that he sweeps the dead ones into “graves” of yellow flowers.

The conversation stuck with me.  Something about the joy in his eyes and face as he talked about carefully and ritualistically burying the bees in piles of golden flowers.

As life would have it, my readings and reflections these past week have centered around death.  And, as typically happens, Ronan is one step ahead.  I am intrigued by how effortlessly and naturally life and death weave together in Ronan’s psyche.  When Death comes, to strive for beauty, even and especially there, to be wrapped in a grave of golden flowers.  I am grateful for the profound lessons that come from the stillness of my time with Ronan.