I am a blubbering mess today. It all started with two tiny leaves.

Actually with 6 leaves 5 months ago.

A resident at the senior retirement home where I work has an amazing collection of African Violets on the carpet near her patio doors. They were all blooming in the spring and I was reminded how I used to have good luck with African Violets.

She brought me 6 leaves from her violets, so I could start my own plants. I bought African Violet soil, so I would be doing it right, planted them in a plant six pack and put them near the skylight in my bathroom so I would see them often and not forget to keep them moist.

Every few weeks she would ask me about my cuttings. I would tell her they were perky, shiny, bright and looked very happy. But no new growth was appearing.

I took a photo to show her how perky they were and she agreed they looked healthy.

After about 3 months with no sign of progress, I broke a gardeners rule and took one out to see if it had any roots or any signs of growth. I figured I would sacrifice one for my curiosity. Instead of lifting it out of the soil I broke off the leaf.

So much for satisfying my curiosity.

I simply could not throw the leaf away, but embedded the base of the leaf in the soil, feeling very sad about what I’d done and hoping it might somehow survive.

Still no progress with the other five leaves, although they remained perky and bright and healthy looking. The leaf I broke off even continued to look perky to my surprise.

When my friend would ask about them I would shake my head and say, “Still perky but no sign of growth.”

Finally, I decided to try moving them to my kitchen window where I used to grow my violets with northern exposure to light. That has been over a month and no sign of change, although they still looked healthy and happy.

This morning getting ready to go to my grief support group I thought I would go take a peek and see if there was any sign of them responding to the different light setup.

At the base of the leaf… the broken leaf, were two of the tiniest green leaves you could imagine. Smaller than a pencil eraser. Maybe the size of a barley seed. New life! New growth! Two!

I immediately thought one for Danny and Cherie… Danny, my oldest son who died of AIDS thirty years ago and Cherie my youngest child, my daughter who died of a ruptured aneurysm 18 months ago today.

Suddenly the tears came. Tears of thankfulness for new life. Tears of missing my two wonderful children. Tears for those two tiny leaves that broke through the soil for me.

I cried through my support group, learned from the others, as always, and cried as I shopped at Walmart later.

I think I am finally beginning to come out of the functional fog that is grief and realize that my precious daughter is gone. Really gone, like her brother, and my mother, and my father and my mother-in-law and father-in-law. Like so many I have loved and lost.

Somehow, life continues in spite of pain and new friendships are found and relationships formed with others who understand raw grief, loss and mourning.

Somehow life blossoms and grows and we grow through our pain and reach out to others in a new deeper way than ever before, like those two teeny, tiny leaves.