[ WP ] `` Every person sees the world in a unique way . When someone dies it is , in a way , the death of an entire world . ''

I will never forget how she first explained it. 
 
 `` It's really purply and really pretty!'' she proclaimed, unaware of anything other than what her eyes were fixed upon. A lily. 
 
 It was a purplish hue, not unlike the sun soaked purple petals of a lily in spring. Lily's were her favorite flower; a mantra of hers that was never repeated enough. `` My name is Lily,'' she'd proudly proclaim in response to somebody's asking as if the words could n't escape her mouth quick enough. `` My name is Lily and this is *my* lily... and I want you to have it!'' She'd force the three legged violet vessel into your hand with a delicate and hurried push, as if she had somewhere to be; somebody else to indulge in her own little secret. 
 
 Her name was Lily and she loved lilies. 
 
 I tried to find as many as I could after she died. Purple, white, green, yellow. The colors were never enough. They stood vibrantly dull against the stonewashed slab of concrete that attempted to encapsulate her memory; a cold, coping drop of color swirled in the sea of tears that surrounded it. 
 
 The tears could not give this Lily life. 
 
 As the saying begins, every person sees the world in a unique way. Lily saw it through flowers. I saw it through her. When she died, it was as if all the lilies in the world wilted, unable to sustain their life without their lily-white lover. 
 
 As the saying finishes, when the uniqueness is gone and someone dies, it is, in a way, the death of an entire world. 
 
 I learned, however, that the somber saying represented only a half truth that nobody wanted to admit. One that I wish I could have ignored. She was my daughter, and she was five years old when she died. 
 
 What they did n't mention was that, when she died it was, in a way, not the death of one entire world, but two. And so as I raised the frigid steel to my lily-livered head, I hoped, if only for a second, that when we died, life did not fade to black; that instead, it faded to purple.
