BREAKING PROTOCOL
~Our Journey of Sunflowers and Rainbows~
By: Angie Jennings
Grief is so unpredictable. One moment you are flying high with so many expectations for your day when POOF, you are triggered, and everything stops. Such was my morning. After dropping Abigail off at school, I came home and began to scroll through social media, coming upon an old “live” video of me and Rachel. It was more than just a few seconds of seeing her; it was getting to relive the actual moment. There was no way that I was going to miss it.
Rather than crumbling into a pile of tears, I enjoyed this memory, savoring every bit. I found myself smiling at my cellphone watching as Rachel and I did everything possible to sell her nail strips that she proudly marketed as “Sunshine Nail Bar.” We played clips of 80’s music. We made cream sodas. And of course, we had giveaways. The best part of reliving this through the video was watching our interaction and hearing Rahel’s laughter while Abigail’s baby talk could be heard in the background.
The irony is that during our live video, we were mentioning things about the pandemic, the “virus,” the mask mandate, and the need to support products such as these made in the United States. Little did we know that almost one year to the date of that video, Rachel would be in the hospital unable to breathe on her own, sedated, intubated, and on a ventilator due to medical protocol to treat that “virus.”
Another thing that I found on the video was Rachel’s explanation of why she liked sunflowers so much. As her Mom, I knew she liked them but really wasn’t sure why. I did find an online image that said something to the effect of “In a world full of roses, be a sunflower.” I didn’t notice as the video was being cast but looking back at it, I noticed that as I showed Rachel that image and read it out loud, she wiped tears from her eyes. She knew she was different and she was different for a purpose.
It would have been so easy and downright tempting to scroll past that live video memory. Many times, I feel like we are too careful for fear of being “triggered.” Let’s break protocol by allowing ourselves to “go there,” gleaning things that perhaps we had missed before. By the way, Rachel said that the reason she liked sunflowers so much was because her Great-Grandmother, my Granny, told her she looked pretty in yellow. I have been asked before about the reason for Rachel’s love of sunflowers and now I have the answer straight from Rachel’s voice.
Rachel's Voice 