Daffodils and Rose Petals
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When you’re young, everything adults tell you is a lie. They tell you that Santa Claus is real, and that he lives in the North Pole with Mrs. Claus and a bunch of little elves that spend the year making toys for you, when in reality the only Santa Claus there is, is the drunken man standing lopsided on the street corner ringing an annoying bell for the Salvation Army, still drunk from the night before when he was hanging out with his friends—who aren’t elves—at the local bar. They tell you that you can be anything in life that you want to be, and to a certain extent, they’re right. Except, they leave out the fact that chances are, you’re not going to be an astronaut, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever other hot-shot profession you dream about—they leave out the fact that chances are, you’re just going to end up working some fast food joint cash register, asking “Would you like fries with that?” They let you believe that the world is made of daffodils and rose petals, and that the sky is always blue unless it’s raining or snowing, depending on which part of the country you live in. They never tell you about the bombs that go off and kill thousands of people, and if you do happen to see a soldier on your TV set with a gun, Mommy or Daddy will just tell you not to believe everything you see and send you outside to play in the yard with your basketball. When that old lady you always sat by on Sunday during church suddenly stops coming to the services and you ask why she’s not there anymore, your parents will just tell you that she started going to a different church. They fail to tell you that that church is six feet under ground at the local cemetery.
For the first ten years of your life, this is most likely everything you’ve believed. For those first ten years of your life, you’ll think that everything is going to be okay. You’ll think that everyone is always smiling, and happy, unless your mom catches you stealing cookies out of the jar or you fall and scrape your knee. No one fights except on the playground, and the teacher quickly breaks that up if it ever happens. You share your food at lunch, and you hold hands with your peers as you’re crossing the street.
It’s all bullshit. Life is horrible. It’s not all shits and giggles, like the adults let you believe while you were young. You’ll start to understand that when you attend your first funeral, which will probably be one of your grandparents, or perhaps even a young friend who dried a tragic accidental death. Suddenly, you’ll see that life isn’t always pretty; that there aren’t always daffodils and rose petals. When you ask your Mom why she’s crying and why the box Grandpa is sleeping in is being covered with dirt, she’ll just hug you tighter and say that God is holding him now, and that you should toss that little white flower you’re holding in your hand down onto the grave.
After that, you’ll gradually see more proof that the world is an ugly, ugly place. Maybe a terrorist attack will hit your country, and you’ll see the footage on the news channel in your living room or the library at school. Maybe your cat got run over, and the person who hit him didn’t even stop. Perhaps your parents will get divorced when you’re a little older, and instead of the loving words and gentle hugs you saw them exchange when you were little, there’s now only bitter fighting and angry verbal exchanges.
For me, I believed that the world was a pretty good place until just a few weeks ago. I’m in a successful band, I’ve got both of my parents, and they’re still married. My sister grew up good, and she’s a good kid still to this day. I’ve got a group of the world’s best friends, and we always tell each other just how much we love each other. I’ve got an amazing wife, and we’ve been together since sixth grade.
I know you’re wondering how on earth I could be so fucking cynical and depressive when I’ve got all that going for me, aren’t you? I mean, from what I just told you, you’re probably thinking that I’m just some asshole who sees the glass as half empty instead of half full. And you’d be right and thinking that way. But it wasn’t always that way. Up until last week, I was that very man who always thought on the bright side. For me, seeing the world in chaos didn’t mean the world wasn’t still daffodils and rose petals. I saw the terrorism getting worse, and I knew people died, but everything was okay for me. I had my friends, I had my wife, and I had a little, four-year-old daughter named Chelsea. They were my world, not the Al Qaida’s and Saddam Hussein’s of the world. For me, life was alright. Bad things couldn’t happen to me.
I was fucking wrong.
It started about a month ago. Chelsea started getting sick. She complained about stomach pains, and then it was her head. She had such horrible headaches. Nothing we did helped. At first, me and Val thought she was just coming down with a flu. Lots of kids in the neighborhood had it at the time, and she had lots of friends that she played with outside. But then she started getting worse. She was always cold, and then she’d be too warm. She couldn’t keep anything she ate down, and she was getting weaker every day. It took us only a week to take her to the hospital. There, they performed all sorts of tests that no fucking four-year-old should ever have to go through. She had so many needles pushed into her pale, sweaty skin, and so many CAT scans and X-Rays that it couldn’t have been healthy for her like the doctors fucking said it was.
It took them another week to tell us they weren’t sure what was wrong with her, but that we should start bringing family and close friends in to say goodbye. How do you fucking deal with that? She was fucking four, not ninety-four. She was too young to die. She hadn’t even begun to live her life, and yet the doctors were telling us that she was going to be dead soon, and that there was nothing they could do for her but make her last days as comfortable as they could with small amounts of codeine.
I didn’t leave her bedside the entire time. She asked me what was wrong with her, and why she was always so numb and sleepy, and why she was always either too cold or too hot, not normal like she used to be. Val and I didn’t know what to tell her. I mean, how can you explain death to a four-year-old in a way they’ll understand? I just told her that the doctors were going to make her better soon. And just like that, I was that fucking adult, lying to the child like they always used to do to me. I let Chelsea believe that everything was okay, like I was told it was when I was little. I let her believe in the daffodils and rose petals.
The guys didn’t know what to do, either. All of them had always been so close to Chelsea. They were her uncles, and she loved them all dearly. The doctors and nurses must have had a lot of strange thoughts, seeing five tattooed guys like us standing vigil at a dying four-year-old’s death bead, but none of us gave a rat’s ass what the fucking doctors thought.
When the funeral came, none of us knew what to expect. The service was the saddest fucking thing in my entire life, and at the same time, I don’t remember having ever been that angry before in my life. I was so pissed off that I couldn’t even fucking cry. How sick is that? I couldn’t even cry at my own daughter’s funeral. I hung off of every word that the preacher spoke, but none of it processed in my mind. None of his words comforted me. He read Psalm 23, and it just made me feel worse.
The cemetery was even worse. There were too many people there to count; all of us there because Chelsea had impacted our lives. There wasn’t one person there who didn’t love that little girl. She was buried in a small plot underneath a willow tree, and none of the guys, Val, or I left until the last shovelful of dirt had been put on top of her grave. We left a bouquet of fresh daffodils there on her grave—it only seemed fitting. Chelsea was a little ball of sunshine for everyone, a ray of happiness in a bleak world. Daffodils seemed like the only choice for her.
And now, here I am, standing in front of her grave a week later. I haven’t slept decent in over a month, and I know I look like shit. I don’t give a shit. I don’t know what brought me here today. I’ve been avoiding this place. It still hasn’t really sunk in that she’s here, I guess. I still imagine her laughter, and her little footsteps running up and down the stairs.
God, if You’re there, only have one thing to ask You. I’ve never spent much of my time praying to You, because quite frankly, I never really believed You existed. I always thought it would be a waste of time to pray to something that wasn’t there. But right now, I hope like fucking hell that You do exist, and that You are up there. I’m asking You to hold Chelsea up there, and make sure that she’s okay up there. That’s all I’m asking You to do. I won’t pray for myself, or for anyone else. If they want prayers, they’ll pray to You themselves. The only person I’m praying for is hopefully already up there. So please, God, watch over her.
For the first ten years of your life, this is most likely everything you’ve believed. For those first ten years of your life, you’ll think that everything is going to be okay. You’ll think that everyone is always smiling, and happy, unless your mom catches you stealing cookies out of the jar or you fall and scrape your knee. No one fights except on the playground, and the teacher quickly breaks that up if it ever happens. You share your food at lunch, and you hold hands with your peers as you’re crossing the street.
It’s all bullshit. Life is horrible. It’s not all shits and giggles, like the adults let you believe while you were young. You’ll start to understand that when you attend your first funeral, which will probably be one of your grandparents, or perhaps even a young friend who dried a tragic accidental death. Suddenly, you’ll see that life isn’t always pretty; that there aren’t always daffodils and rose petals. When you ask your Mom why she’s crying and why the box Grandpa is sleeping in is being covered with dirt, she’ll just hug you tighter and say that God is holding him now, and that you should toss that little white flower you’re holding in your hand down onto the grave.
After that, you’ll gradually see more proof that the world is an ugly, ugly place. Maybe a terrorist attack will hit your country, and you’ll see the footage on the news channel in your living room or the library at school. Maybe your cat got run over, and the person who hit him didn’t even stop. Perhaps your parents will get divorced when you’re a little older, and instead of the loving words and gentle hugs you saw them exchange when you were little, there’s now only bitter fighting and angry verbal exchanges.
For me, I believed that the world was a pretty good place until just a few weeks ago. I’m in a successful band, I’ve got both of my parents, and they’re still married. My sister grew up good, and she’s a good kid still to this day. I’ve got a group of the world’s best friends, and we always tell each other just how much we love each other. I’ve got an amazing wife, and we’ve been together since sixth grade.
I know you’re wondering how on earth I could be so fucking cynical and depressive when I’ve got all that going for me, aren’t you? I mean, from what I just told you, you’re probably thinking that I’m just some asshole who sees the glass as half empty instead of half full. And you’d be right and thinking that way. But it wasn’t always that way. Up until last week, I was that very man who always thought on the bright side. For me, seeing the world in chaos didn’t mean the world wasn’t still daffodils and rose petals. I saw the terrorism getting worse, and I knew people died, but everything was okay for me. I had my friends, I had my wife, and I had a little, four-year-old daughter named Chelsea. They were my world, not the Al Qaida’s and Saddam Hussein’s of the world. For me, life was alright. Bad things couldn’t happen to me.
I was fucking wrong.
It started about a month ago. Chelsea started getting sick. She complained about stomach pains, and then it was her head. She had such horrible headaches. Nothing we did helped. At first, me and Val thought she was just coming down with a flu. Lots of kids in the neighborhood had it at the time, and she had lots of friends that she played with outside. But then she started getting worse. She was always cold, and then she’d be too warm. She couldn’t keep anything she ate down, and she was getting weaker every day. It took us only a week to take her to the hospital. There, they performed all sorts of tests that no fucking four-year-old should ever have to go through. She had so many needles pushed into her pale, sweaty skin, and so many CAT scans and X-Rays that it couldn’t have been healthy for her like the doctors fucking said it was.
It took them another week to tell us they weren’t sure what was wrong with her, but that we should start bringing family and close friends in to say goodbye. How do you fucking deal with that? She was fucking four, not ninety-four. She was too young to die. She hadn’t even begun to live her life, and yet the doctors were telling us that she was going to be dead soon, and that there was nothing they could do for her but make her last days as comfortable as they could with small amounts of codeine.
I didn’t leave her bedside the entire time. She asked me what was wrong with her, and why she was always so numb and sleepy, and why she was always either too cold or too hot, not normal like she used to be. Val and I didn’t know what to tell her. I mean, how can you explain death to a four-year-old in a way they’ll understand? I just told her that the doctors were going to make her better soon. And just like that, I was that fucking adult, lying to the child like they always used to do to me. I let Chelsea believe that everything was okay, like I was told it was when I was little. I let her believe in the daffodils and rose petals.
The guys didn’t know what to do, either. All of them had always been so close to Chelsea. They were her uncles, and she loved them all dearly. The doctors and nurses must have had a lot of strange thoughts, seeing five tattooed guys like us standing vigil at a dying four-year-old’s death bead, but none of us gave a rat’s ass what the fucking doctors thought.
When the funeral came, none of us knew what to expect. The service was the saddest fucking thing in my entire life, and at the same time, I don’t remember having ever been that angry before in my life. I was so pissed off that I couldn’t even fucking cry. How sick is that? I couldn’t even cry at my own daughter’s funeral. I hung off of every word that the preacher spoke, but none of it processed in my mind. None of his words comforted me. He read Psalm 23, and it just made me feel worse.
The cemetery was even worse. There were too many people there to count; all of us there because Chelsea had impacted our lives. There wasn’t one person there who didn’t love that little girl. She was buried in a small plot underneath a willow tree, and none of the guys, Val, or I left until the last shovelful of dirt had been put on top of her grave. We left a bouquet of fresh daffodils there on her grave—it only seemed fitting. Chelsea was a little ball of sunshine for everyone, a ray of happiness in a bleak world. Daffodils seemed like the only choice for her.
And now, here I am, standing in front of her grave a week later. I haven’t slept decent in over a month, and I know I look like shit. I don’t give a shit. I don’t know what brought me here today. I’ve been avoiding this place. It still hasn’t really sunk in that she’s here, I guess. I still imagine her laughter, and her little footsteps running up and down the stairs.
God, if You’re there, only have one thing to ask You. I’ve never spent much of my time praying to You, because quite frankly, I never really believed You existed. I always thought it would be a waste of time to pray to something that wasn’t there. But right now, I hope like fucking hell that You do exist, and that You are up there. I’m asking You to hold Chelsea up there, and make sure that she’s okay up there. That’s all I’m asking You to do. I won’t pray for myself, or for anyone else. If they want prayers, they’ll pray to You themselves. The only person I’m praying for is hopefully already up there. So please, God, watch over her.