We trudged up the winding apartment steps: left, flight of stairs, left, second set of stairs. The trail led up to the shadowed door. Entering the tiny kitchen, the nauseating smell of dead mice hit us in the face. They ate the rat poison and crawled under the floor space to die and rot in the summer heat.
Large pale sunflowers danced on the old wallpaper, long forgotten without the sun. Trinkets with the yellow flowers on the counter attempted to brighten the room with their billowing petals, faces staring back, witnesses to the cries and screams within those walls.
On the table lay my mentor’s Bible and journal, accompanied by a blue pen and yellow highlighter. Always yellow, her favorite color. Did you know October has multiple birthstones ranging from the traditional pink, to a mystical burgundy or Indian orange, or even an aqua blue? But her favorite was the beryl stone, a tame yet exuberant yellow. Every year, October creeps in and I wonder how she is doing. My heart yearns to call her or send a letter just to know that she is well.
But how can she be? Her two boys are grown and married, no longer their father’s punching bags. Who is now the recipient of those blows? He can no longer call the police at night because his teenage son disobeyed him. Her husband, furious with disagreement or disapproval, often left to a hotel for several days and nights, knowing the financial strain of unpaid bills because of his inability to keep a job. He further withheld sexual intimacy for control and manipulation. Who is left to stand up against him?
Mrs. Julie and I would sent thank you cards and get-well cards while I was in college, and I would look specifically for ones with yellow flowers, but not just any yellow flowers, sunflowers. I still have one in my room ten years later, bearing the emptiness left of an abrupt end to our friendship but unable to bring myself to dispose of it.
When I see fields of giant sunflowers, swaying in the warm breeze, I long for our phone calls and days of intricate Bible study and answered prayer, pouring out my heart, a teenage girl, simply longing for a closer walk with the Lord. Wandering through stores, I see them painted delicately on cookie jars and storage containers and I am instantly taken back to hours on the couch, her husband screaming and berating me because I was supposedly a fake. He raged that I could not be saved because I “never repented,” a life unchanged. I see the long petals at a grocery store and wonder if she is alright, still trapped while I am free.
Life still holds many triggers from the past: some weak, while others debilitating. This one, a single flower, intended as a beautiful, intricate, gift from God, slices and stings deep within, protected away in the hidden parts of my soul. Please…. Don’t send me sunflowers.
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