Tiny things can give us faith in rebirth. On Easter, know love is stronger than death

The message is the same in all of the stories: Love is stronger than death. This day that we are given can teach us joy again — over and over. There are forces far greater than we mortals, forces for resurrection and life. Hosanna and hallelujah.

One year, a personal resurrection story brought me back to knowing the message. My story is not as classic as Persephone returning from Hades to bring spring, nor as world changing as the miracle story of Jesus rising from the dead. But it brought to me the same message, allowed my soul to know that love and joy and light can return after times of despair and disheartenment.

It begins with a little rhubarb plant given to me by a friend in 1991. I planted it in terrible soil, against all advice, and it grew to be a massive 4- or 5-inch plant. For years, I gave it food, and I watered it every day in the summer, gave it nicknames. Somehow, it got into my system, an enduring symbol of life’s faithfulness year after year.

Then, in the spring of 1998, my sister died of cancer. As the oldest of four, I had always felt responsible for the safety and well-being of my siblings. Kate’s death dropped me into a hole of grief, fatigue, anger and despair. I had failed.

I took it out on the blessed little rhubarb.

It was one of the darkest times of my life, and I said, “What’s the use of tending to something and caring for it? Let the cursed thing die!” Almost like some perverse act of revenge against death, I killed it in my heart. I wiped it out of my troubled heart for all the hot, hot days of summer, knowing that it could not live untended through our blazing summer. I kept the rhubarb erased from my being through all the cooling days of autumn and the icy days of winter.

Then harbingers of spring, 1999, started to arrive in the Treasure Valley — and in my heart. I started to think of my bonsai rhubarb, source of so much fun and joy for so many years, and I was sorry I had killed it. I felt as though I had, through my own self will, sustained another loss — minor, but echoing the great loss.

One day early in that spring, I wandered down to the spot where the brave-little-rhubarb-in-terrible-soil had spent its days.

Out the door. Down the steps. Down the walkway and driveway. Onto the road, past the mailbox. Over the pesky juniper and — Yes! There they were, tiny bright-red shoots. Smiling at me — chastising me, oh ye of little faith, comforting and assuring me.

Because my attention was brought back to those little brave red shoots, I began the long road back. Joy and love were taught to me, once more.

The rhubarb gave me a personal Easter story for my battered and numb heart, helping me to see things I had not seen truly before.

I do not create the spring, and I cannot kill it. When I am all alone and in despair, I may live in hope, for the forces of resurrection are at work in the darkness. Life will rise again, in the fullness of time, bringing us the good news that joy returns. The presence of death ebbs, and love is stronger than death.

This is what Easter is about. This is what the old stories teach us.

The once-dead rhubarb lives! Jesus Christ is risen today! Persephone returns! For all this and much, much more, hosanna and hallelujah!