The Secret Life of Bees Death Quotes

July 1, 1964, I lay in bed waiting for the bees to show up, thinking of what Rosaleen had said when I told her about their nightly visitations.

'Bees swarm before death,' she'd said (1.5).

That night I lay in bed and thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise. I would meet her saying, 'Mother, forgive. Please forgive,' and she would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame. She would tell me this for the first ten thousand years (1.8).

Time folded in on itself then. What is left lies in clear yet disjointed pieces on my head. The gun shining like a toy in her hand, how he snatched it away and waved it around. The gun on the floor. Bending to pick it up. The noise that exploded around us.

This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away (1.48).

She played music for dying people, going to their homes and even to the hospital to serenade them into the next life. I had never heard of such a thing, and I would sit at the table drinking sweet iced tea, wondering if this was the reason June smiled so little. Maybe she was around death too much (5.23)

'The first day we were here May told us that April died.'
'And that's when it all started with May,' she said, then looked at me like she was trying to decide whether to go on (5.103-104).

May lay in two feet of water with a huge river stone on top of her chest. It weighted her body, holding it on the bottom. Looking at her, I thought, She will get up now. August will roll away the stone, and May will come up for air, and we will go back to the house and get her dry. I wanted to reach down and touch her, shake her shoulder a little. She couldn't have died out here in the river. That would be impossible (10.29).

August said, 'We sit with her so we can tell her good-bye. It's called a vigil. Sometimes people have a hard time letting death sink in, they can't say good-bye. A vigil helps us do that.'

If the dead person is right there in your living room, it would certainly make things sink in better. It was strange to think about a dead person in the house, but if it helped us say good-bye better, then okay, I could see the point of it (10. 90).

June played with her eyes closed, as if May's spirit getting into heaven depended solely on her. You have never heard such music, how it made us believe death was nothing but a doorway (10.97).

'Covering the hives was supposed to keep the bees from leaving. You see, the last thing they wanted was their bees swarming off when a death took place. Having bees around was supposed to ensure that the dead person would live again.'

My eyes grew wide, "Really?'

'Tell her about Aristaeus,' Zach said.

'Oh, yes, Aristaeus. Every beekeeper should know that story . . . Aristaeus was the first keeper of bees. One day all his bees died, punishment by the gods for something bad that Aristaeus had done. The gods told him to sacrifice a bull to show he was sorry, and then return to the carcass in nine days and look inside it. Well, Aristaeus did just what they said, and when he came back, he saw a swarm of bees fly out of the dead bull. His own bees, reborn. He took them home to his hives, and after that people believed that bees had power over death. The kings in Greece made their tombs in the shape of beehives for that very reason' (10.134-137).

'Putting black cloths on the hives is for us. I do it to remind us that life gives way into death, and then death turns around and gives way into life' (10.144).