When Tsunami Tears Turn Into Pearls

Too many tsunami tears have been shed here. It’s over. Though the corona virus has ended and life continues, everything is different now. I’m standing before an ocean of tears in California and I want to drown in the waters. At this point, my only wish is to take my last breath on earth and join my daughter in heaven.

“It’s OK, Mama, I’m still here for you,” I hear her say, “And so is Dad.” Laura is speaking from beyond the rainbow now and she’s blocking my movement. I can no longer run into the waters to kill myself and I am unable to run away from her. Her blue eyes look into my greens, as her spiritual auras comfort my crying soul.

“You know I’m still your little Princess, mom,” she giggles.

She walks with me in spirit, to the beach house I’ve rented to be alone, as I reach for her hand and I am with her. I’m in the now of the moment, standing in the same house I rented three years ago when she ran away from me and my death wish is disappearing.

“You can’t give up now, mom.” Laura whispers, as if saying it out loud makes it unbearable for her. My saving sunshine girl is explaining that even angels cry when someone they love is hurting as much as I am. I’m in awe of every word I hear as I listen intensely to my gifted daughter speak.

“You haven’t really been alone at all.” She speaks with a heavenly smile that fits perfectly with my longing for companionship and I breathe her in.

Lord of mercy, my daughter was only 17-years old when she ran away from home though. Once she took off, I never saw her alive again. A full year passed before I even heard her voice on the phone. It was the year of 2017 and her last words to me were, “I’m ok. I’m sorry I waited so long to call you, mom. I was just afraid you’d be mad at me and I couldn’t handle it. I can’t talk long now anyway. I’ll stay in touch. I promise.”

Of course, the dreaded call comes in the wee of the morning two years later, as I lay awake in my Capitola home missing her. Drug addiction has taken a toll on this young 20-year woman who cannot hear the music anymore. All of my daughter’s bittersweet songs sift in the wind and blow away. She dies in the alone of a lonely shell that has broken her.

She is dead now, gone forever, and I, Brenda, am a 40-year old widowed woman on the verge of insanity. How can I possibly find happiness without a living husband or a child to love? Danny’s fatal heart attack killed him eleven years ago and my sweet baby girl passed away from a heroin overdose in 2019.

A short time later, the corona virus enters mankind to upset the world. At this point, my faith simply disappears into the air and I crumble into nothingness. There isn’t much left of me when the virus plagues America and my hometown is hit hard. The only thing I can do is to roll up my sleeves and help to save others.

I am a much needed professional nurse in our local hospital, with a decade of experience and I’m willing to take on the world. I immediately begin working 12 hours on, 12 hours off as a Nurse in San Jose and witness death everywhere. The days turn into weeks and months of exhausting work and there’s a 40% pay cut to go along with it.

The end of SARS-CoV-2 is an unexplainable, mysterious miracle that makes every road Elm Street. Some say that God, Himself simply uttered the words “be gone” and the virus was no longer. The remaining year of 2020 is finally over the worse and the nations are rejoicing. There is a healing in the universe that runs deeper than words could ever say and gratitude is unmeasurable.

Not for me though. Maybe for me, it’s “post stress syndrome” or an inability to truly appreciate that the crisis is over. Perhaps it is a guilty conscience I have, it being I did not get sick and die when so many others did. Many of my co-working nurses passed away through this ordeal and I cannot count how many patients we tried to save and failed.

Though my beloved daughter sits with me in the beach house now, I know she isn’t really there. I’ve merely borrowed her from heaven for a short while and she will leave me again. She intuitively knows I feel this way and she adamantly disagrees with my opinion.

Don’t I know that I, too, am merely passing through, from the earth places I live in to enter my very real home in heaven? Can I not look through the transparent eyes of time and see the clarity of my worth? Laura’s eyes are the color of the sky she has traveled above and over. She’s telling me that her questions already have an answer that reached through me on the day I was born.

Life goes on and, one by one, we’ll pick up the fallen pieces and build another bridge somehow. Our mourning cities and towns will cry out loud for as long as it takes to repair broken hearts and find laughter again. My daughter tells me the answer to our question is in the pearl of life that every hand holds.

“I won’t walk into the ocean,” I finally say to her, “I will continue to work as a nurse and polish the pearl everyday. Everything and everyone I have lost through this crisis is a light that shines through me.”

“That’s right,” Laura beams, “and may the candle never burn out.”