The Bullfrog
The Bullfrog
Cousin Kim called that sparkling spring morning, a couple of weeks after Lauren died. I could detect excitement in her voice when she said hello. She said that I should come right over. She asked me if I had prayed for a sign or a gift, because there was something in her driveway that was obviously meant for me. I dropped what I was doing, grabbed my camera, and rushed right over to Kim’s house. I couldn’t wait to see what she found so amazing. As I drove up, I could see Kim and her two year old son Cy looking at something under the carport.
I walked up and couldn’t believe what I saw. It was the biggest bullfrog I had ever laid eyes on. It was in the middle of her driveway, just sitting there. As we approached the frog, it hopped under her husband Stewart’s truck. It stayed there, as we ran around grabbing cameras, phones, and the toddler. It must have been quite a sight, Kim, Cy and me, all laying on our stomachs with our feet hanging out from under the truck. We had our cameras in hand, and snapped away, taking pictures of the huge bullfrog, which just seemed to sit there and let us. We even put a baseball next to it for scale, and it still never moved or tried to get away from us.
Kim went inside for a minute with Cy, and I stayed outside. I didn’t want to leave the frog. I decided to touch the frog if it would let me. I walked up to it and put my camera down to film myself. To my amazement, it let me touch its back, and it just sat there. I was so excited I had to take the camera inside to show Kim the footage. When I looked out her kitchen door, my heart skipped a beat. The frog had followed me across the carport and was at the bottom of the steps outside her kitchen, looking at me! I excitedly ran out the other door so I could film it. When I got to the carport, the bullfrog had moved up onto the first step. I felt like it was trying to follow me into the house. My heart was aflutter, and my face was beaming! This was something special, and I knew it. I could not make myself leave the frog, and I didn’t want to. I wanted that moment to last as long as it could, because for that instant, I felt peace.
Kim, Cy, and I ended up sitting with the frog, and each other, for about 2 hours. She told me that she thought maybe the frog was a symbol for Lauren’s spirit. She encouraged me to bring it down to the water’s edge, and release it, just like I was releasing Lauren’s spirit to the full glories of heaven. The thought hit my heart with a thump. I really did not want to release Lauren any more than I already had. I was scared that maybe I wouldn’t receive her gifts of frogs, or feel her presence around me anymore. If I was holding her here in some way, I wanted to keep her. How could I give up her spirit too, it was all I had left. I thought about it, and realized that I was being selfish. If I could release this frog as a physical representation of releasing Lauren’s spirit to heaven, I had to do it, and I wanted to do it for her.
So, I decided to give it a try, for Lauren. I told myself that if the frog let me pick it up, I would do it. I walked right up to it again. My heart was racing. It was a huge bullfrog, and I expected it to put up a fight when I picked it up, but it didn’t! It just hung there. I held it right behind its head with my thumb and middle finger. Its body filled the palm of my hand, and its legs hung down to my elbow. I carried it, legs dangling, down to the edge of the bayou. I put it down in the grass next to some irises, still not sure about letting it go. Kim kept telling me to move it closer to the water. I ended up picking it up twice more, with absolutely no resistance from the giant bullfrog, and moving it closer to the water’s edge each time.
The frog just sat there. It let me pick it up, fix its feet, move it twice, it was amazing. Its eyes were incredible. I was close enough to see the whites of its eyes. They didn’t look like frog eyes if you looked at them really close. After waiting to see if it would jump into the water, I began to second guess myself. I remarked to Kim that it must be sick, and maybe I should bring it back where we found it. When I bent down to pick it up with the intention of bringing it back, it hopped into the water. It lingered there, just within our sight, until we finally walked away. I felt good about leaving it, and what I had done. Kim told me that she went back later to check on it, and it was gone, but there were three small frogs hopping around the place where I released the bullfrog.
Kim has lived on that bayou her whole life, and she has never encountered a bullfrog in the yard like that before. I showed the footage to my Dad, who is a herpetologist. He says that it was not normal behavior for a bullfrog to let us approach it and handle it the way that we did. Whatever happened that day brought me peace. It allowed me to release Lauren’s spirit from the confines of my heart, and it opened my heart to the truth. I have not stopped receiving frogs, and I still feel Lauren’s spirit with me, as much as I ever did. I feel like releasing the bullfrog was a gesture of good faith, and hope for what’s to come. Releasing that frog hurt just like letting her go again, but I did it because I am still Lauren’s mother, and I will always put what’s best for her before me. Now I know that I never was capable of holding Lauren’s spirit in any way. I was only holding my own heart hostage by my own grief and by releasing the frog, I wasn’t releasing Lauren, I was actually releasing myself.
Tara Rodney
4/6/11
