Birds have sown a gigantic sunflower on my porch. It grew up beautiful, strong, vigorous, and got over one meter tall. Two months later, a bud came out and I started to get up earlier and go straight to the window in the hopes that the magic would be done and the flower would have blossomed, revealing its sunny core. One day, it happened: I got up and was greeted by a flower the size of a dessert plate. That was three weeks ago.

Since then, I’ve cared for this plant as if it were a baby, but the flower is dying—and I’m dying of sorrow. I talked to a gardener and he explained to me that plants have a different lifecycle. Some live a short life, like herbs and vegetables in general: even if you devote a great deal of care to a head of lettuce, it will grow, generate a flower, release its seeds and die within less than six months. This is their nature. Trees, on the other hand have a longer lifecycle, but even a jequitiba tree will die, eventually.

Sunflowers live from four to six months, depending on the species. “No matter how much you water or fertilize them or  fluff up their soil, as their lifecycle gets nearer the end they will slowly die,” told me Mr. Juareis. This will be the faith of my bird-sown sunflower.

Ever since he told me this, I’m making sure the plant makes the most of its last days. Instead of cutting off the dead flower, I’m letting the plant decide when it will do it. I’m doing this because it is when the flower fades away and loses its beauty that a secret chemistry happens in its core: it prepares its descendants— the dozens of seeds it will release onto the ground and which birds will sow around.

But if I know all of this, why do I feel like a little light is dying inside me, day after day?