Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [63]
Then we went to the cemetery, where the kind funeral director took us around in a golf cart so we could look at burial plots. Surreal.
We got out of the cart at a plot with a little tree beside it. My friend Terri Coley bent down in the grass. “Look!” she said. “There’s a lady bug!” She carefully picked up the little spotted creature.
Maria loved lady bugs. “This is fine,” I said. The funeral director asked if we wanted to think about plots for ourselves.
“Why not?” I said. “We’ll take three plots, and Steven and I will be buried here beside her.”
I turned and walked away. Done.
Later our friends took us – except Shaoey and Stevey Joy – back to our house for the first time since the accident. It was more difficult than I can describe to pull into the driveway. None of us wanted to go in the back door, which was our normal routine. The memories of the accident were too fresh in our minds.
We parked in the front spots that visitors use and went in our little-used front door. Quietly. Pausing every few steps.
I needed God to show up, because I thought I could never live in that house again. I went upstairs, my legs feeling like thousand-pound weights were attached to them. I walked into Stevey Joy’s room – which up till yesterday she had shared with Maria. I fell down on the floor and started sobbing. I grabbed some clothes for Stevey Joy. Then I thought carefully and selected the things of Maria’s that we would display at her memorial service.
I climbed up into her bunk bed, laid my head on her pillow, and took in deep breaths of my little snuggle bunny who had loved her bed. I lay there and sobbed and sobbed, never wanting to leave.
But I somehow made myself get up. I went to Shaoey’s room to get clothes for her.
Then I rifled through my own closet, pulled out random clothes, and threw them all in a bag.
We walked into the family room and made a big circle. The house was so still. We prayed. We asked that God would honor our pain and surprise us with joy that could only come from Him.
Steven and Caleb had been praying like crazy since the night before, something like, “God, we know you’re in this, but we’re so confused and hurt. You’ve got to show us something tangible so we can know Maria’s with You! Please, we need to see you in this, please let us see!”
Steven was slowly making the rounds of the house, retracing some of Maria’s steps from the day of the accident. He walked into our dining room. Next to the bay window Stevey Joy and Maria had two little art tables where they had spent tons of happy hours creating things. They loved coloring and gluing and taping and glittering just about anything they could get their sticky little fingers on.
Steven looked down at Maria’s table. There was a piece of notebook paper there. Maria had drawn a six-petaled flower with a green stem and two leaves. Only one of the petals was colored in. Blue. Maria’s favorite color. The center of the flower was orange.
Steven saw something bleeding through from the other side of the paper. He turned it over. Maria had colored an orange butterfly, and written a word she’d never, ever put down on paper before.
Maria could write her name and little things such as “I love you,” but she hadn’t started writing other words yet. Since Stevey Joy was a little older and a year ahead of Maria in preschool, she had a list of words to learn. Steven’s best guess is that Maria must have copied one of the words off the list.
And the word she wrote was SEE.
SEE.
Staring at Maria’s artwork, Steven had tears spilling down his face. It was like Maria was speaking to him from heaven, from the very realm of eternity, saying “SEE? Can you SEE? Everything is going to be all right. I am here with Jesus. I am fine. Heaven is real, the gospel is true, you just have to SEE!”
Several days later, when we were getting ready to leave Karen’s house, I drew Maria’s artwork on a white board there. As I drew the flower, I realized it had six petals. Like I had six children. And only one of the petals was colored in. Like only one of my