March 4th, Day of the Daffodils

Mar 4

So this isn’t an art post, but every year this time, I post this story of hope. This is the 30th anniversary of my sister-in-law’s home-going which unbelievably means she’s been gone longer than her short 29 years here.

In memory of the thirtieth anniversary of Susan’s passing, I have painted “Early Morning Hope.”

There is hope in sadness, maybe especially so. Here is my story from March 4th, 1992.

We all have certain moments in time when we know if we live to be 100, we will never forget them. Some of those moments in my life are the times I learned of the deaths of Elvis and Michael Jackson; when John Lennon was killed, and President Reagan was shot, and certainly the day of September 11th, 2001. After many years, I still remember exactly what I was doing when I learned of the above events. It’s as if time stood still for just long enough for me to process what had happened.

I bet many of you can also remember those same events, and others that I don’t, depending on their importance to you, and your age.

But in addition to those days in which millions are affected to some level, we each have our own personal days where time stops and we know that our life just changed forever.

One of those days for me was March 4th, 1992.

I received a call at work from my husband. He told me I needed to come to the hospital; the doctors had called in the family. I knew exactly what he was telling me. That my precious sister-in-law was not going to get any better.

Susan had been fighting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for a little over a year. After several months of chemo and radiation, it appeared that she was well on her way to recovering. In fact, she was given a clean bill of health the previous November, only to learn in January that the cancer was back with a vengeance.

It had spread to her kidneys, liver, and other organs. Over the next couple of months, Susan suffered through painful rounds of strong chemo. The chemo killed the good cells along with the bad, and ultimately was too much for her lungs. Not able to breathe on her own, Susan was put on a ventilator a couple of weeks prior to that dreaded call from my husband.

With the family gathered round in a little room, a doctor confirmed our fears. Susan could not live without that ventilator. To give enough notice for other family members to arrive, it was decided that the ventilator would be removed in two days.

There aren’t many times, before or since, that I have felt such heartache. How could God take this beautiful 29 year old wife, and mother of a seventeen month old? They needed her. Her parents needed her. Her brothers needed her. I needed her. Susan was one of those rare individuals that spread joy and light wherever she went. She was always laughing and carried a sparkle in her eyes. She was truly a gift to us all, and we weren’t ready to let her go.

After the gut-wrenching news, I drove Lib, Susan’s mother, and my sweet mother-in-law, to her house while the rest made further arrangements. We walked inside the house, and I remember Lib offering me bedroom slippers so I would be more comfortable. I guess it’s funny I would remember that, but I remember thinking that this woman’s heart feels like it’s been shred in a thousand pieces, and she’s thinking of MY comfort! But I took the bedroom shoes, and put them on. I began to vacuum the floor in anticipation of the company that the coming days would inevitably bring.

As I vacuumed, something caught my eye. I looked out the picture window into the back yard, and saw them – dozens of beautiful yellow daffodils. Where had they come from? I was just there. They had sprung up over night. In that moment, it was as if God said to me, I AM HERE in the midst of your sorrow. Those daffodils completely changed the bleak winter landscape that was there only a day before.

Seeing those daffodils meant hope to me. And it wasn’t the hope that Susan would miraculously recover, but the hope in knowing that God would bring us through this terrible winter in our lives.

Two days later, on a stormy Friday morning, Susan went to her home in heaven.

Thirty years have now passed, and I’m not going to say that it was easy, especially those first weeks and months. At times it seemed more than we could handle, especially for David, Paul and Lib. It’s different when someone so young has been taken from you. You feel cheated. After all these years, I still wonder what Susan would be like today as a 59 year old, and how would our family be different.

But despite those really hard first months, and even years to follow, we have gone on with our lives. As God promised with the sighting of the daffodils that day in early March of 1992, our family has surely been blessed along the way, and He has been right here with us.

Now I don’t know how heaven works, but sometimes I really think that Susan searched this earth for a woman to be a mother to DJ, and found Pam.

Pam, I love you! I hope you know what a blessing you are to me. And even though the marriage didn’t last, you were a wonderful mother to DJ and were instrumental in DJ going to Furman and meeting Ashlyn. Susan couldn’t have hand-picked anyone more loving and kind than you to help raise her son.

In the last twenty-five years, lots of life has been lived. There have been births and deaths, marriages, and divorces. This is life after all, and life is filled with happy and sad moments and a whole lot of in-between ones.

But through all of it, the hope that God gave me that morning remains.

I still miss Susan terribly, but I know that we’ll have plenty of time to catch up one day. Yes, I will see her again – and that is my hope. And not only Susan, those who have already joined her.

I look forward to that day when I once again see those sparkling blue eyes of hers. I can see us now, laughing together the way we used to, walking side by side through a field of lovely, yellow daffodils.

~Connie Wyatt

,This revised edition of March 4th – The Day of the Daffodils is in memory of Susan Wyatt Fagg 9/13/62 – 3/6/92. We miss you.