Chicken Soup for the Grandma's Soul by Jack Canfield Page B

the reality that Grandma, the only grandparent I had ever known, had died.
    My connection between her and the flowers was so strong. I told myself I was too busy for gardening so many times that I convinced myself it was true.
    As I drove home from the airport one chilly November evening, I was overwhelmed by an empty pang in my heart. It had begun as a slight ache and built up to a deep, hollow throb after five straight days of deadlines, lists, conference calls and meetings. I hadn’t allowed any time for myself, to read, to visit with friends and family or even to pray. I had tried to ignore this vacuous feeling. I had just kept going and going, like a robot following programmed commands, forgetting about all of the things in life that gave me deeper meaning. The pain was especially great this particular evening due to a canceled flight that delayed my getting home until long after my lonely husband was already in bed.
    After fighting eight lanes of stop-and-go traffic for over an hour, caused by what appeared to be a fatal accident, I arrived frazzled and tired in my suburban neighborhood. As I pulled into my driveway, my headlights shone into the empty flowerbeds. I glimpsed something white resting on the ground. I parked my car in the garage and walked around to the front yard to collect what I assumed was a piece of garbage to throw away. But I did not find trash. Instead I found a lone white pansy with a purple face flourishing by itself in a barren bed of pine straw.
    The determined flower had fought all odds to spring from a ripped-up root, which is not bred for regrowth, to return another year. It didn’t seem possible, and maybe it wasn’t. Yet here was a perfect pansy grinning at me and asking me from its remarkable face why I too couldn’t break through the dirt and let myself bloom.
    Touching that flower, I knew this was Grandma’s way of letting me know that although she had left this earth, she wasn’t really gone. Just like the pansy that had been pulled from the soil yet was still blossoming, my grandmother’s spirit would always flourish inside my heart. I sighed, recalling that Grandma would have never put work first. Her family and friends were the priorities in her world. She didn’t know the meaning of timetables or deadlines. Although her life was simple, she was always happy and saw only the good in others and the beauty in the world around her.
    It was time to open my heart and my eyes to the important things around me, to fill up the empty hole inside me with the nourishment that only God, family and friends could give me. Work could wait. Life, as the pansy showed me, could not.
    Laura L. Smith

Red and White Carnations
    This was the first Mother’s Day since Grandmother passed away. I dreaded going to church and seeing families sit together with their moms. I hated being in church alone, and especially today I hated admitting to myself and others that my mother left and my parents were divorced. I never talked much about it, but I realized everyone in the church knew more about it than I did.
    â€œMaybe I should have stayed home,” I said to myself as I walked up the church steps.
    â€œGood morning, and happy Mother’s Day,” a greeter said to several churchgoers in the narthex. “Please take a red carnation if your mother is living and a white one if she has passed on.”
    I must have stood in front of the large basket of flowers for several minutes. I couldn’t decide which one to take.
    My real mother is alive, but dead to me. I reasoned. She left when I was two years old, and I’ve only seen her twice in all of my sixteen years.
    The first time she showed up was two years ago. It was my brother’s high school graduation. A teacher came to me and said, “Barbara, this is your mother.”
    â€œMy mother!” I snapped. “What is she doing here?” Behind my teacher stood a brown-haired, short lady with a warm