I have several lilacs here on my property, and they are among my favorite of flowers. I always associated the white lilac with Lila; when I have my land and can scatter the ashes of my loved ones I will scatter hers on a white lilac bush.

The day I took her dear, still little body in for cremation I picked a bunch of the flowers and brought them along.

Lila made her journey two years ago May 26. And this year, we have had the strangest of springs; everything got warm very early, and flowers sent up shoots far too soon - I had crocuses in full bloom early in April, when normally there is still a significant blanket of snow. but subsequent return to normal seasonal temperature killed off everything - we've had no lilacs, the forsythia opened and shut in two days, ditto the Kwanzan cherry tree, the chokecerry and the apple blossoms. Trumpet flowers and wigelia (sp?) hanging in..but alas, no lilacs, they started to bud and then died in the ridiculous snow we had suddenly a few weeks back.

Except for May 26.
As I spend a fair part of every death anniversary in communion and remembrance, I spent time with Lila that day, this little dog who had changed my life so deeply and taught me more about spirit than any book I've ever read...lit a candle on the shrine where I keep ehr ashes, played memorial music. It was late in the day and I was sitting out back when a strange bird cry caused me to turn my head quickly and strain to look in a westerly direction. And then i saw them; the one lilac bush, the white one, struggling under the branches of my magnificent white pine, had burst into full blossom. just that day, and just the white one.

the next morning I cut them all down and put them in a vase in my room, beside her ashes.Their powerful, gentle fragrance filled the upstairs, and for me it is a scent filled with love, optimism, sweetness in life and love that is stronger than physical death.

One thing I know, in a world that offers us so little certainty about anything; love never dies. It is never lost or forgotten. Lila was celebrating her bond with me on the other side, as I spent my day thinking of her.
And the flowers sang to us both.

I love you, I miss you, I give thanks for you daily

For Light

Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.

In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.

When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.

When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.

When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.

As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.

And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found word.

~ John O’Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)