When the bumblebee dies, the day is the most beautiful it has ever seen.
The world above has never been so blue, so clear and lulling, and the trees have never smelled so sickeningly sweet. The bumblebee once thought that trees were like the promise of something higher. That if trees could grow to touch the sky, perhaps the bumblebee could, one day, do it too. Laughter rings through the air, and it is the bubbling creek that runs through the woods. The wind rustles its skirts as it dances through the day, flirting with the heat of the summer that relentlessly beats upon the earth.
It’s strange, don’t you think? That life just goes on as the bumblebee catches its last glimpse of the sky. The clouds continue rolling, racing in a competition to reach some foreign land as they stumble and fall over one another. I don’t know what they are in such a rush for. Perhaps I could tell them to slow down.
I also know the stars continue to breathe at night, sending letters of light into the world down below. Do the stars realize that the bumblebee no longer flies? Maybe, but the world does not stop for the death of a single creature.
In its last moments, the bumblebee is in a sea of busy shoes. Not in a meadow, not amongst petals. Instead, people— giant and looming, walking in the plaza with intentions to reach their destinations. The bumblebee thinks that these creatures are the largest flowers it has ever beheld. My feet come close, and nearly crush the bumblebee. It is only because I refuse to step on the cracks in the tiles of the stone floor that the bumblebee lives another agonizing second. Mercy, or torture? What is it that I have bestowed upon this struggling insect?
Is it better to see beauty through the haze of a ticking clock, or is it better to not know beauty at all?
The bumblebee is so terribly small. It does not see me— it is looking at the ground. I find it odd that such a small creature can be so present, so violently itself in a world where everything is bigger and more terrifying than my nightmares. It trips with legs that cannot withstand its body anymore, and flutters wings that have been torn. The fuzz that covers its body struggles to comfort the bumblebee, convincing it that in death, it will not be cold.
The little one thinks back to times that have gone by. In its short life, it has seen and heard many things that would be so lovely if they were composed into a musical piece. Its version of the “Flight of the Bumblebee” would not be the racing cascade of notes that rain down, but rather the painting of a singular, round creature trying its best to touch the sky.
I could say that such a statement is foolish and, quite frankly, just silly. Bumblebees can never touch the sky, and creatures that yearn for things that cannot be are creatures that die forever in their unreachable dreams. But who is to say where the sky starts and ends? On the ground where it struggles, the bumblebee thinks that it has reached the clouds. The hands of heaven have reached down, and cup the bumblebee because it believes.
“He replied: ‘Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you,
if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain,
“Move from here to there,” and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.’”
Matthew 17:20 NIV
If you have faith as small as a bumblebee, you can say to the sky, “Move from up there to down here,” and it will move.
And so the bumblebee dies.
Its body lies on the asphalt plaza, further away from home than it has ever been. But I tell you, do not mourn.
For now we know, at least some bumblebees have faith.