Fruit, Death, and Reason

My little neighbor brought me a bowl of fruit yesterday.

A wonderful thing to receive from a 5-year-old, anytime. Only it was completely her idea and inspired by a dream that she gave me a bowl of fruit.  With lemons.

I can’t help but wonder about the timing of the delivery and the dream that inspired it.

Sometimes, children are placed on hospice.  I’ve known this, but I got to know it in a new way last week.  She was 6-years-old and died on the same day my little neighbor dreamed she brought me a bowl of fruit.

I told my neighbor’s Grammy about my emotional week and how a fruit delivery from a little one couldn’t have come at a better time.

I explained that I couldn’t sleep during the wee hours of the previous morning, so I got up and prayed.  I prayed most especially for our newest and youngest patient and learned later it was at that time when “our” earthly angel became a heavenly one.

She thought that was interesting because my little neighbor had the same trouble sleeping and called for her, at the same time.  Grammy mentioned something about us being “connected”.

Are we connected beyond living next door and having a mutual love for one another?  Are we connected in ways that sometimes wake us up or we can sometimes feel, but never see or comprehend?

During that couple of hours of way-too-early, I was searching for God’s presence.  I needed to know He was aware and at work amidst the upside-downness of a child dying.  I needed to know that I wasn’t showing up without Him.

He is used to hearing from me on my way to situations that are too hard for me.  “If You aren’t coming, I ain’t going!”  He hasn’t let me down, yet.

And this is what He gave me that morning when I was looking for Him...

“Who has ever said that the presence of God - in his actions and his words - has to be felt?  Sometimes God grants that sensation.  At other times, he doesn’t.”

This, from Blessed Conchita.   A wife, mother, and laywoman who just happened to be beatified when we were in Mexico this past May.  We sat in folding chairs outside the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the blazing sun, and we watched the man who was healed through her intercession, walk into the Mass of her Beatification.

Attending a Beatification Mass because we were “in the area”, two people not sleeping at the same time, a timely quote from the beatified, the death of a child, a child’s dream and conviction to act, and a bowl of fruit, hand-delivered.

Maybe they are only connected because I put them together in the same sentence.  But, maybe not.  

I don’t know what to make of it, but I’m okay with that.  I am enjoying the possibilities. 

“For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, 

‘Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy when a man comes to his end...

Because we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been; because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts...

The Wisdom of Solomon 2:1-2