The bee was wriggling erratically on the concrete just outside the front gate of the school. It caught my eye the way things do that are not right somehow.
I wore khaki pants, and was heading home after volunteering that morning, back when I did such things, when the PTA reached out its wanting hands for warm bodies to read to kids and teach art and plan the Jog-A-Thon to raise money for the music program. Before I had a Middle Schooler whose years spent at home outnumber the years left.
I’d been leading a 4th grade Literature Circle group — a volunteer gig I enjoyed more than most others; the half-dozen advanced readers I met with weekly were a good bunch.
We read Natalie Babbit’s Tuck Everlasting that year, and instead of letting them choose their end-of-book project, I made them illustrate a list of vocabulary words I culled from its pages — “indomitable,” “bovine,” “plaintive,” and the like — words I didn’t see in our other Lit. Circle readings.
At the end of the book, in Related Readings, was a poem, “Remember,” by Christina Rosetti.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray. ...
In previous years I might not have noticed the bee. Or I could have ignored him, or taken one swift step in my slip-ons and put him out of both his misery and my mind with one decisive motion.
But this day his frantic movement caught my eye. I stopped and bent down to one knee, watching him struggle. The bee’s presence penetrated my own, and I felt stung with a barb of unexpected compassion.
I see your end of days, I thought to the bee, and I couldn’t bring myself to impose my concept of “what was best.” And maybe, just maybe, a concept was all it was anyway, designed only to make me feel better.
So instead I said goodbye to the bee, and thanked him for being, before I stood up and headed home. I don’t know if anyone saw me kneeling down on the walkway, and wondered what I was doing there.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Photo of bee courtesy abbyladybug. Some rights reserved
I liked the poem, for reasons I'm sure you can guess.
As for the bee encounter, it reminded me of a recent similar incident I myself had with a small, struggling insect on the sidewalk. It, too, was wriggling on its back so I gently righted it with a leaf but to my dismay the tiny thing quickly ended up on its back once again.
I realized its time on earth was likely drawing to a close but felt no need to hasten its demise. Instead I covered it with a leaf so at least it could die in peace, undisturbed by any other passers by who might come along after I left.
Posted by: Ingrid | September 20, 2011 at 03:40 PM
Thanks for the comment, Ingrid. It's surprising, isn't it, when something that in another context would be considered a pest instead stirs our compassion.
Posted by: Louise | September 21, 2011 at 03:16 PM
Yes, I agree. I usually will set an insect free that I find in my house (rather than kill it) if it is just a random fly or spider. Ants, however, are another matter entirely! I also have no problem swatting a mosquito that is attempting to use me as a meal--its last meal if I can help it!
Posted by: Ingrid | September 22, 2011 at 04:23 PM