PTSD and Daffodils

 I’ve a love hate relationship with daffodils.  I love how they spring up to life in all their glory at the end of a grey, dead winter.  If they had a personality, I feel they would be an introvert. They stand alone, unassuming, and unaware of the beauty they bring to darkness.  I love them because they remind me of a scene in Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory when Willie Wonka(Gene Wilder) picks a daffodil in the factory, holds it like a cup & saucer, then proceeds to drink from it. Metaphorically speaking, we all drink from their beauty on an overcast day in late winter.  In Mississippi, that day is always in February.  Their arrival is my keeper of time.  

And I hate daffodils for that reason.  

When I see their cups upright on a humid overcast morning in February, my body kicks into PTSD.  A few days ago at work, I looked out the floor to ceiling windows-February hit me like a weighted blanket.  The lump in my throat was back, the full body burn was back. The inability to swallow was back.  The anniversary of my husband’s tragic sudden death was back. The body keeps the score.

The knock on my door came around 3:30am. My husband was out of town on business. I cracked the door & heard these words, “We have a fatality to report”.  Just writing those words makes my body feel as if an elephant is sitting on my torso. 

At some point In following days, my friend Beth came over with a bouquet of daffodils she’d picked from her garden.  The bright yellow flowers seemed as if they were the only color in my house at that time. 

Daffodils make me think of Beth and her tender love she extended to me that day. They remind me that beauty & life still spring up after a dead  winter. I bought a fixer upper last year. Next to a low broken down brick wall, clumps of daffodils are in bloom.  Their unexpected placement in the landscape means they’ve been around awhile and have seen lives come and go, and yet still show up to share their light & hope. They are like a messenger, blowing a horn as if to say, “Hear ye hear ye!  Winter’s almost over, the worst is over, more beauty is coming.”  More beauty is coming.