Flower Dress
Here’s the thing with flowers.
No matter how beautiful they are, no matter how much they cost or how many “oohs” and “ahhs” they get, they die. The junky weedy, sometimes lovely, daisy type flowers die the same way the gardenia dies.
Isn’t that strange? All this time I’ve been thinking, emoting about the human experience and metaphors that ride along side life, and right under my nose (pun intended) was the mother load of all life parallels. Flowers.
Different shapes and sizes, smells. Flowers come from all over the world, adapt to different climates. Some are wild, some are trim and proper. Some flowers are elegant and some are downright rangy. There are flowers with thorns, tiny soft flowers that bruise easily. Just like people.
All flowers are blooming, living their lives. Some hope to attract bees and pollinate and I’m pretty sure some of them can do that whole reproducing thing on their own. Busy, busy lives these flowers, all in an effort to keep going because they must know what we humans know.
They won’t last forever.
Their time is short and they have to make the best of it before their petals wilt, they lose their scent or worse start to get that stinky “time to throw the flowers out” smell. Because once they’re gone they will return to the earth, they may even get to help feed other flowers, but they will never have another chance to bloom, feel the warm sun, attend weddings or show up at someone’s door as a surprise.
Their time will be over, the clock is ticking.
Maybe that’s why we like flowers so much. They’re beautiful, indescribable for a time, a blink. We can relate.
My thoughts from the laundry room. No Time to Rest.
acceptance garden life people Yeah Write death flowers life people thoughts Writing
A lovely reverie. I’ll never look at flowers the same way again. I’ll also have a hard time throwing them away now. I might have to start holding funeral services for them instead. 🙂
Funeral services…hahahaha. Thank you for reading.
haha! And maybe that’s why I like plants rather than flowers! Great post!
Gone in the blink of the eye, which is maybe why we value them so much and find them so special when we get them. I love flowers but I don’t get them much any more. When my husband and I was dating, he always brought be roses…always. About every time we got together. Spontaneous. Then we got married, and had kids, and money was used for bills, food, and stuff for the kids. Every once in a while he will surprise me…and I just love and treasure those flowers all the more.
You know, I have never really thought about it like this before. How we can “relate”. Truer words have never been spoken!
Thanks, Jen.
Loved your perspective. I grow flowers in my garden and use them in my writing all the time. I hate that they die, but the sad ending is so worth the journey leading up to it.
I’m looking forward to more of your laundry room thoughts 🙂
So true.
Really liked this analogy to Life–how very true!
Thank you. 🙂
Very true. I love that picture too!
Thanks, Barb. Me too. Such a great flower.
Beautifully put. And when I think of it this way, makes facing my own mortality and those of loved ones seem oh so natural. Less scary. I wish I could accept with more grace.
I think it’s a float every day between grabbing on for dear life and letting go gracefully. Some days it all makes sense and I feel flickers of peace, and other days I just want to hit the pause button on the whole damn thing. Sigh…grace. Yup, that’s what I’m hoping for too. When my number’s up, I really don’t want to be a grasping crazy person. 🙂 Thank you for your comments, Kay.
A lovely post, Tracy! And so true…thank you!
Thank you, Barb. So nice to have you directly in the laundry room. Thank you for reading.
Flowers, like people, are the (temporarily) living embodiment of The Dharma of Impermanence.
That sounds super existential, Ron. I will admit that I must now Google.