They All Mean Something

It was always a somber day when Dr. Death was in. He was a genial enough man, if a bit reserved. He always remembered the nurses’ names, asked about weekend plans as he signed in. He wasn’t much for conversation. He rarely made eye contact. He was a small, thin man, with a pall of solemnity. His clothes were always a size too big. He had thick-rimmed glasses and a high, shiny forehead, topped with thick but graying hair. His sneakers squeaked as he walked down the hospital hallways, announcing in a near comical way the decidedly un-comical man. He hunched slightly forward as though carrying the difficult years of his career physically on his back.

“Dr. Death” was the alias given Dr. Eduardo Molina by the nurses in the oncology ward at St. Clair’s Children’s Hospital. Dr. Molina was not a medical doctor at all, in fact. He was a psychologist, specifically a child and family psychologist. His job was to help young children understand and cope with death. Most of his sessions were with children whose parents, grandparents, or siblings passed away, or were about to. But his hardest assignment of all was working with children with terminal diagnoses. Today was the day he would meet Jade, and it weighed heavy on the nurses at St. Clair’s. They knew it was coming—Jade’s insidious osteosarcoma had taken a fatal turn in the past few weeks. But over the course of their terms in the children’s oncology ward, the nurses had all learned the same lesson: knowing what’s coming doesn’t make anyone any more prepared when it finally comes.

Dr. Molina knocked softly and entered the room. The late morning sun streamed in through the blinds onto the linoleum floor. The TV was playing cartoons, but nine-year-old Jade wasn’t watching. She was engrossed in a leather-bound book with a golden dragon embossed on the front. It looked enormous in her small hands. She was aprecocious reader, even before she got sick. Even on her worst days, as long as she could hold a book, she was reading. Her bedside table was so laden with gifts and flowers that some had been moved on the floor next to her bed. Jade’s huge brown eyes followed Dr. Molina as he entered the room. They looked even bigger for the lack of eyelashes from several rounds of aggressive chemo.

“Hello, Jade. I’m Dr. Ed. Hi, Dad,” he said, nodding to Jade’s father seated in the armchair in the corner of the room. He had the gaunt look of a man who had lost a lot of weight very quickly.

“Hi,” answered Jade quizzically. She had had many doctors come and go, but they wore white coats and carried clipboards. This doctor wore khakis and a plaid shirt and carried a bouquet of flowers. His sneakers squeaked as he pulled up a chair beside the bed.

“Do you mind if I turn this off for a little while?” Asked Dr. Ed, reaching for the remote.

“Oh, yeah, that’s okay. I wasn’t really watching it, I just have it on for the noise while I read. I don’t like all the beeping.” Jade had the articulation of someone who had spent many months talking to mostly adults. Doctors, nurses, family, teachers, and neighbors who stopped by.

“I heard you love to read. Is that a good one?”

Jade’s pale face lit up. She lifted the book to show him the cover. “It’s so good. I started this yesterday and I’m already almost halfway done! I’m kind of sad because it’s the last one in the series.”

“Well I wish I would have known you loved books so much, I would have brought you one! I hope you’ll accept this humble gift of flowers,” said Dr. Ed, clearing a small space on the table for the bouquet of marigolds. “Do you like flowers?”

“I guess so.”

“What’s your favorite?”

“I like tulips.”

“Tulips! Lovely. Again, I wish I would have known.” Said Dr. Ed. “Marigolds are my favorite. Hopefully, they’ll brighten up this dreary room a bit! I don’t think they’ve changed this wallpaper since before I was born.”

Jade giggled and crinkled her nose. “It’s so ugly!”

“I’m no decorator, but I have to agree. Well, Jade, as you might have guessed, I’m not a regular doctor.”

“You don’t have a white coat. Or the…stethoscope.” She motioned to her own neck as she recalled the name of the tool and its cold touch on her skin. So much in the hospital was cold.

“I don’t. That’s because I’m not a normal doctor. I’m a talking doctor.”

“A talking doctor?”

“Yep. I’m sure you’re tired of all the poking and prodding. Let’s just talk.”

“Okay…”

Dr. Ed paused for a moment, looking into Jade’s deep and expressive eyes. So much of how he related to each individual child depended on feeling. He had to feel what they felt, know what they knew. See the world simply, diametrically. There was good and bad. Right and wrong. Beautiful and ugly. Life and the lack thereof.

“You said before that you like tulips, Jade.”

“Yeah. They’re pretty.”

“What do you think makes them pretty?”

Jade thought for a moment. “Uh, they’re colorful?”

“They sure are. What else?”

“They smell nice.”

“Uh huh. Anything else?”

“Um…I don’t know. They’re just pretty!” She shrugged, giggling.

“You know, tulips only bloom in the spring. Have you ever seen tulips in the winter?”

“Um, I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”

“Yeah, they have festivals just for tulips in some parts of the world. People wait all year for it. See, what makes tulips so special is that they’re only around in the spring.”

Jade was quiet. Dr. Ed went on. “It’s kind of like, your favorite ice cream. What’s your favorite ice cream, Jade?”

“I don’t know. Cookie dough?”

“Mine too! Well, think about it, if you ate cookie dough ice cream every day, and you knew you were going to have it again tomorrow, it wouldn’t feel as special, would it?”

“Uh…” Jade chuckled.

“Well okay, Jade, maybe you really love ice cream and you could eat it every day! What I’m saying is that—is that what makes things really special is that you don’t have them all the time.”

“Okay…”

Dr. Ed went on. “It’s the same with flowers, Jade. What makes them so special is that they’re fragile. They don’t last a long time. Only a couple of months.” He stopped to study Jade’s face. “What makes all flowers so beautiful is that, well…they die.”

Jade paused for a moment. Then she sighed. “I’m going to die. I already know.”

From the corner of the room, Jade’s father let out a heaving sob.

“Don’t mind him, he does this,” she said, motioning to her father. Dr. Ed couldn’t help but smile at Jade’s precocity, but this part never got any easier. It took some children longer than others to get there, but they always did. Somehow, even the very young ones already knew. And in his whole career, almost every terminally ill child he spoke with was completely, unabashedly unafraid.

For some, death grabs violently from behind. For others, it taps gently on the shoulder. Jade had already turned to face it. She was stoic.

Dr. Ed patted her small, pale hand. “Did you ever learn about Día de los Muertos in school, Jade?”

“Maybe, I don’t remember,” she answered.

“Well, where I grew up in Mexico City, it was the biggest party of the year.”

“What for?” She asked, her curiosity piqued.

“It was the day all our loved ones who had passed on visited us to celebrate their lives. And to celebrate our lives. We’d even leave out their favorite snacks and cookies!”

“Like Santa?” She asked, skeptically.

“Sort of,” said Dr. Ed. He plucked a marigold from the bouquet and set it gently in Jade’s lap.

“These flowers are special because we’d use them to decorate the altars of our loved ones who’d passed on. The marigolds are a signal to them so their souls can find us.”

Jade picked up the flower and spun it around.

Dr. Ed continued, “So I have an assignment for you and Dad here,” he turned to motion to Jade’s father, who was doing his best to smile through his tears.

“I want the two of you to pick a flower—any flower—and use that as your signal. So whenever Dad puts out those flowers, you’ll know where to find him, and you can visit him.”

Jade’s father buried his face in his hands and sobbed loudly.

“And whenever he sees that flower, he’ll know you’re around.”

“Any flower?” Asked Jade.

“Sure,” answered doctor Ed, “It can be tulips if you’d like. But I love marigolds, you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because they mean happiness. And hope.”

Jade lightly touched the delicate petals of the marigold.

“Do all flowers mean something?”

Dr. Ed took her small hand in his. Tears filled his eyes. Another brave child, another indelible mark on the sober psychologist’s soul.

“Yes. Yes they do.”