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Sunflowers

When I gave birth to my son, his Aunt Ellen called the hospital to congratulate us.


I barely knew Chip's family. I'd met his (elderly) parents. I knew he had a brother in California and another in NYC, and a sister, Ellen, in St. Louis. After I gave birth to Eli, Ellen called the hospital. Chip talked to her for a minute and then gave the phone to me.


I was probably still on the high of giving birth. I remember she congratulated me and said how happy she was for her baby brother.


When I met Ellen in person about 18 months later, it was in a St. Louis hospital room. Ellen's doctors had diagnosed multiple myeloma and the family had gathered in support. The occasion allowed me to meet them all - California, New Jersey, St. Louis.


Ellen was a remarkable woman. She was a guidance counselor in a private girls' school and was widely admired and loved. The Dalai Lama visited her in the hospital. Her Rabbi was a woman named Susan and no one in my life has ever made me feel spiritual in their presence the way that woman did. Sitting in a hospital room with Ellen and Susan made me feel like I was on Mt. Olympus in the presence of gods.


Ellen was known for her love of two things in particular: Sunflowers and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Both played a major role in her services when she passed the next year. The services were held at the Graham Chapel on the campus of Washington University. Sunflowers abounded. A string quartet played Over the Rainbow.


In the months after Ellen passed, I took Eli to a children's reading time at our local library. The book was The Sunflower House by Eve Bunting. The children in the story plant a circle of sunflowers. The flowers grow into a tall sunflower house, where they can hide and have adventures. One day the children show up and the flowers are beginning to die. But then they make a discovery!


"There's still the puffy middle part

That's filled with seeds...enough to start

A sunflower house next spring,

With walls, a roof and everything.


It's nice to think when something's gone,

A part of it goes on and on.

It's such a super-duper plan,

We pick out all the seeds we can."



Read more about Ellen and Baby Eli's relationship with her HERE

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