The Ring and the Roses

            by Caitlin O'Donnell

 

            I wore the ring to remember her. Wrapped tightly around my pinky, it was a thin gold band adorned with a crooked heart. When she first gave it to me, I tucked it away for safekeeping. It sat in a tiny box lined with a scrap of creamy velvet that I found in my mother’s sewing basket. I liked looking at it in that box, nestled in the soft folds. 

            “This is a very special ring,” Judith had said as she dropped it into my small, outstretched hand. “You can keep it for as long as you like, but whenever you are ready you must give it to someone else to enjoy, just as I am giving it to you.”

            Dolls and incense, poetry books and Kwanyin statues, the ring was one of many carefully selected presents Judith had given me over the years. Her gifts were not all material things. Judith had come into my life through giving. She had volunteered to write for a Buddhist magazine that my mother edits. I remember watching the two of them leaning over each other’s writing while drinking steaming cups of tea that left wet ringlets on the coffee table. As she and my mother became friends, she began to babysit for me, take me out on excursions and invite me to celebrations.

            Judith gave me an extended family since my blood aunts and uncles lived thousands of miles away. Though she had no children of her own, her house was always filled with children celebrating the holidays or eating teacakes in the garden. I was one of those children. They came from her neighborhood or were daughters and sons of friends from her many projects—the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the Quaker Sunday school, and Amnesty International.

             Each season offered an occasion for me and other children to play games in the layers of Judith’s garden. On Easter, I eagerly jumped out of the car at the end of Judith’s long driveway where a group of imported farm animals trotted, waddled, and flitted around the makeshift pen. There were two goats, a sheep, a duck, and seven chicks, each dyed a different color of the rainbow. I scooped as many chicks as I could into my lap, arranging them in color order as I caressed their feathers while Judith sat on the ground next to me cradling the ones I couldn’t fit.   

            When I had just learned to speak in sentences, Judith gave me the gift of wondering. She urged me to ask questions. I lay curled under my flower print comforter, my head propped up on a pillow. Judith, my babysitter for the evening, sat next to me, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed. A barricade of stuffed animals surrounded us to protect me from the darkness that crept into my room every night.

            “Do you have any questions that you ever wonder about Caitlin?” Judith asked as she moved an alligator to fill an empty spot in my barricade.

             I thought for a moment, “Why do worms bite into apples?” Earlier that day I had found a small hole in my otherwise perfect shiny green apple.

            “That’s a good question. Do you have any more?” she coaxed.

            I bit my bottom lip and squinted my eyes in contemplation, “How did there get to be dirt?”

            “Lovely.” She glanced out the window towards our garden.

            It was winter and the Dawn Redwood stood awkward and naked in the backyard. “How can needles fall?” I hated when the needles fell because now I couldn’t climb into the tree and find refuge in the lush foliage.

             “More?’ she asked.

            “Why did granddaddy die?” My arms grasped tightly around my favorite stuffed animal, a floppy purple creature with the words “Caitlin’s Critter” tattooed in a heart on its stomach. 

            “That’s a tough question. I wish I had an answer. Do you ever wonder about how things become the way they do?” She reached out her hand and ran her fingers through my thick hair. 

            “How did glass become breakable?” I searched for the hardest questions.  “How did Darkness get made?” I could feel my protectors around me all getting ready for their nightly battle to fend off the inevitable darkness.

            She smiled “Yes, those are some very good questions. I don’t know the answers but keep asking. Questioning what you know is a very powerful thing.” 

             Judith gave me the gift of poetry since she was my first poetry teacher. In fourth grade she came to my class as part of the Poets in the Schools program. She showed me how to question life through poetry in order to get to the truth just as she had urged me to question what I knew in the past.

            Judith was always giving a helping hand to the homeless, war veterans or children in Bosnia, joining up with the Quakers and the Buddhists. She took me to my first celebration of Buddha’s Birthday, a play of the Buddha’s life with costumes and dancing and even a large elephant with huge papier-mâché droppings.  I sat in the front row chewing on the candy that had been tossed into the audience. The play had just ended and people in painted masks and flowing dresses were mingling with the crowd. Judith beckoned me towards her. I pushed myself up, shoving candy into the pockets of my pants. “Now it is time to pour sweet tea over the baby Buddha to symbolize a renewal of peace in the world,” Judith said, holding out a large wooden ladle. I took the ladle and walked over to the altar, a canopy of intertwined flowers with a little Buddha in the center peacefully resting in a lake of tea. Taking a scoop of tea, I let its cool orange drip down the Buddha and into the lake.  I looked back at Judith and she smiled. The ceremony revolved around the goal of peace in the world and peace within ourselves. To me Judith was a model of generosity and peace.

           

            Nobody knew where Judith got the gun. She had kept it hidden, slipped away in a shoebox, waiting for the right moment to end her own life. They found her distorted body in the garden that I had dashed through so many times looking for Easter eggs concealed by the roses. All she left behind of herself was a note for her husband, which no one else saw.

            There wasn’t much to be thankful for that Thanksgiving weekend. Even my mother’s attempt to protect me failed. I slid across the seat of the stuffy Volvo and carelessly threw my soccer bag over my shoulder and into the back. My teammate Maria slid in next to me, closing the door. The car was silent for once, no unwanted remarks about the tournament from my father, no gestures of consolation from my mother. I liked it. After games, all I wanted was to think in silence.  

            All four windows were rolled down and, as we entered the freeway, cold air slapped against my face and tangled my hair. “Mom could you roll up the window?” I brushed the hair out of my eyes, curling a strand around my ear with the tips of my fingers.

            “No, it’s hot”

            “Yeah, but it’s hitting me in the face.”

            Silence. The front passenger side window rolled up in reluctant jerks coming to a stop at the halfway point.

            “What’s the matter?” I asked. I knew something was wrong; being quiet was not a quality my mother often possessed.

            “I don’t want to talk about it.”

            “What’s wrong? Does it have to do with me? Did something happen?” I was relentless. Trying to figure out what happened was almost a game.

            “Someone died. I really don’t want to talk about it.” My mom glanced over her shoulder at Maria, a silent apology for putting her in the middle of this.

            My heart skipped and I could feel a sudden anxiety welling up in the back of my throat. “Who?” My mind was racing. It couldn’t be someone I was close to, could it? Maybe it was one of my mom’s old friends I had never met or a friend of my grandmother who had died of old age. 

            “Not now Caitlin. I’ll tell you when we get home.”

            “Is it someone I know? Someone in our family? A friend? Who?” Maria shifted uncomfortably next to me, turning toward the window to watch the cars flash past.

            “Caitlin not now!” my mom was looking back from me to Maria. 

            “Who?!” I wasn’t stopping until I knew. I had to know. The anxiety in my throat was growing. 

            “Judith.”

            Silence.

            I saw her smiling, walking through her garden, a hug to one guest, and a kiss on the cheek for another. The light was dancing on her sunhat as she welcomed each of us. It didn’t seem possible. It felt as if my insides had just been through a blender and my heart began to pound against my chest. When I spoke again my voice was quieter, emptier, quivering. Tears slid from the corners of my eyes down my nose, dripping from my chin. “How?”

            “Suicide,” my mom whispered.

            In the months to come, I couldn’t stop asking- Why? Suicide. Judith. The two words seemed like contradictions that didn’t belong together in a sentence. The most peaceful person I knew had done the most violent act I could imagine. Along with so many other children, I had trooped around after Judith to see the movie Babe, to carry flags in a parade at the Buddha’s Birthday celebration and to tenderly pack up the baby chicks when her Easter party was coming to an end. She was always teaching lessons on compassion. What kind of lesson was she teaching us now? In one final act, she had gone against everything she had committed her life to. My uncle had just died of lung cancer after fighting through three difficult years of chemotherapy to stay alive, and she just threw her life away with one small motion of her finger. Around me adults cried of betrayal. I shed tears of horror, confusion and loss.  

             Poems seemed to flow out of me onto the backs of envelopes and scraps of newspaper. Through writing poetry, I searched for an explanation. I sat in the car outside of King Middle School where Judith had volunteered. I couldn’t get myself to move. My mother was already in the garden where Judith’s students were planting a David Austin rose bush, her favorite flower, in honor of her life. I was just waiting, waiting to enter through the metal gates where the lies of parents that didn’t want their children to know how Judith died were woven in with the flowers. If I went in, I would have to pretend that Judith hadn’t ended her own life. I would have to stand there watching the oblivious children’s faces as they patted down the dirt around the budding bush. I felt a sudden urge to write and shuffled through the stuffed glove compartment. A dull pencil with no eraser and a ripped map—that was good enough. I began to write without thinking, unsure of where the next line would lead me.  To my surprise, my words came in rhymes, a style I had never used before.

It was cold,

a barrel of steel,

a pathway to death,

her fingers held the only key.

Eyes shut,

mouth pursed,

just waiting for the sound,

it felt so right, but yet so wrong, to leave it all behind.

No turning back,

There is no way out,

The pathway called to her.

Her hand was shaking,

but she pressed the key.

The gateway opened and she was free.

 

            That night, I vaguely remember pushing aside my tears as I opened the box where the ring had rested untouched for so long and slipping it onto my finger. To me the ring was a piece of Judith. I would keep the ring on always and it would become just as much a part of me as it was a part of her.

            As I took Judith into myself, I still needed to deal with some of the pain she had left behind. Sitting on a lone cushion in a small side room of a Buddhist monastery, I again asked: Why? Ajahn Amaro, a monk who had been a spiritual guide to both Judith and me sat in front of me considering the question.

            “Don’t try to find an explanation,” he advised me, “Just let yourself feel the pain, the sorrow, the loss and the anger. To let your feelings out, dedicate something in your life to Judith. In a soccer game, score a goal for her or run a race for her and dedicate the happiness you feel after completing these things to her. Also, I want you to try to not think of Judith as her last act. She was so much more than that.”  

            I don’t remember scoring a goal or running a race for Judith but the words themselves helped me understand that when I felt joy and happiness I could feel it in memory of her. I could begin to see her again as the woman walking through the garden bending down to breathe in a sweet sent, not the woman who lay cold and still among the roses.

 

            Several years later, as I walked down the lively halls of Berkeley High, I felt a sudden emptiness. Looking down at my finger, I saw that the ring was gone. I retraced my steps, scanning the floor where forgotten pencils and the remnants of paper bag lunches hid in corners. I emptied my bulging backpack and recruited friends to help me. It was no use. My hand felt naked. I felt as if my connection to Judith was lost. For weeks, my thumb searched automatically up and down my pinky looking for the missing ring.  Slowly, my thumb gave up its search.

            Images of Judith still appeared in my thoughts at unexpected times. I sat at my computer typing up an interview I had done of a homeless family, their words stumbling out of the tape recorder on my desk. As I stopped the tape, the image of Judith drifted into my mind. She had always pushed me to ask questions and here I was asking questions about homelessness, an issue so important to her during her life.

            As I lifted a child to my shoulders, her hands grabbed my hair for support. I again thought of Judith. I had started a small camp for neighborhood kids and, just as at Judith’s, children dashed around my backyard (although instead of nibbling catered tea cakes, the kids in my yard munched on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches).  I felt, as she must have felt, with many eyes looking up at her, waiting to see what she would suggest to do next.

 

            Though I couldn’t pass on the ring, I realized I could continue to give to the people around me what Judith had lost the strength to offer. Through embracing life the way Judith ultimately could not, perhaps I will come to accept some of the confusion and loss her death has brought me. I am beginning to see that the gift Judith gave me was not the ring itself, but the message to pass on your gifts to the people you love.