Geneva, City of Yellow Peonies and Dying Mothers

I’ve always loved flowers. However, flowers, like people, die.

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I remember, it was a while ago now. The middle of winter, bitterly cold and far too much snow to be safe. Yet there I was, walking down a street in Geneva, bundled up, hair getting frozen by the precipitation and humidity in the air (my mother had insisted I get out of her apartment for a little. Claiming, “I’m not going to die in the hour you’re gone!” She’s stranged like that.)

I passed multiple establishments, all either closed due to the hour or the snow (finding dinner at 9:30 wasn’t the best idea.)

Finally, a friendly-looking cafe greeted my eyes. Warm lighting oozing through large windows onto the icy pavement made it look like the cafe was an oasis in a desert (except the desert’s a blizzard and the oasis boasts a two-for-one deal on brunch.) Nevertheless, I entered. Subsequently, I was greeted by a blonde waitress speaking far too quickly to understand (and in French!)

“English, please?” I finally managed to interject.

“Oh, yes! I’m so sorry!” she had exclaimed, waving her hands profusely, “Welcome to La Pivoine Jaune! A table for one?” 

“Yes, please,”

She led me through the empty cafe, effortlessly picking up abandoned coffee cups along the way. 

“Here we are!” she’d said, abruptly stopping. 

She handed me a menu as I sat down, and left me alone to “think about my order.”

My eyes darted across the menu and within seconds, I settled on my order. Setting down the laminated paper, I decided to look around the medium-sized establishment.

Every table had a bouquet of different flowers on it. All the tabletops shined (as if they’d been freshly cleaned) under the pleasant lighting. My table had a bouquet of just-now-starting-to-bloom flowers. Yellow peonies, to be exact. They caught my eyes like no other bouquet in the cafe.

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Dinner was mostly boring after that. I stared at the peonies a lot- something about them fascinated me, I suppose. 

I was in and out of the building within 45 minutes, maximum.

After escaping the comfortable air of the cafe, I was only greeted by heavier snow than before. The night sky was yellow with heavy clouds and I couldn’t see a pedestrian or even a taxi anywhere.

The flurries of snow bit my cheeks as I continued trudging through the quickly deepening snow. 

As fate would have it, I wasn’t stranded in the snowy, darkening night for too long. Another oasis had sprung from the unforgiving landscape! An oasis that appeared to be a quaint flower shop. The light through the frosted-over window was greener than the cafe’s light, but welcoming nonetheless.

I entered the shop, rubbing my hands to try and get some warmth back. There was nobody behind the counter, so I decided to look around by myself.

On one side of the store, there were magazines, flower care items, and a small area for arranging flowers. 

 On the other side, flowers covered the walls. Buckets upon buckets of different kinds of blossoms, all carefully labeled and organized. 

I decided to look at the magazines first. Many of them talked about the “hottest up-and-coming flowers”, and all of them agreed that the best flower to buy or plant for the upcoming spring was the yellow peony. They all showed different pictures of the flower in question.

Funny, I’d seen yellow peonies twice in one night.

I moved to the flower wall. The brightest, healthiest blossoms seemed to be the yellow peonies. Their buds were only partially opened, but they were beautiful nonetheless.

Funny, indeed.

I left the shop five minutes later, after defrosting myself a little more.

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I remember, it was a little later. Maybe a month or so? I’d been taking care of my mother, running all the errands, and trying not to get lost in the streets of Geneva, just following a normal and calm routine. Then, I saw yellow peonies again in a place where they shouldn’t have been. I’d seen them in adverts and grocery stores, but never in an unusual place like this. 

This time, it was in a bookstore. I’d been browsing the shelves, trying to find something my mother would like, when I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned around and saw a short, blue-eyed man standing in front of me.

“Excuse me,” he had said in slightly accented English, “are you Mr. Dekaber? The author, I mean?”

“Yes, that’s me?” I’d said, slightly confused as to why he’d approached me.

“I’m a big fan of yours!”

He shoved a bouquet of bright yellow peonies (fully bloomed) into my hands and sped out the door before I could say anything else.

“I’m seeing these everywhere,” I remember thinking to myself.

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I kept seeing yellow peonies everywhere. But it became overwhelming when they infected my mother’s space as well.

It was another two months later when I’d checked my mother into the hospital for end-of-life care. There, in the lobby, were bouquets upon bouquets of flowers, mostly yellow peonies. They were fully bloomed out, and some heads were even beginning to drop petals here and there.

I swore I’d come back next week to visit.

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The next week was even worse. My mother was quickly weakening and all the staff were telling me to say my goodbyes now.

I bought flowers from a small shop next to the hospital (yellow peonies, their last bouquet. Roses were too romantic and my mother was allergic to lilies. Flowers like daisies or baby’s breath just wouldn’t do, and the only option left was peonies. The pink ones were already slightly wilted and the white ones bore an overpowering scent. Yellow peonies were the only appropriate option, really.)

I entered the hospital, seeing wilting bouquets of peonies everywhere. Their yellow dulled by death and the smell of lemon disinfectant.

I brought the flowers up to my mother’s hospital room, where she lay, asleep. I carefully arranged them in one of the many vases next to her bed, and sat down for a moment.

It was time for the goodbye before the last goodbye.

I wrote my semi-final words to her on multiple sheets of paper and stuffed them into a gray envelope.

I placed the letter under the vase of peonies.

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Four days later, I got the call.

It was the last day for her, they’d said. Come today for your goodbyes, they’d said. So I came, and there she laid, looking paler and frailer than ever. She beckoned me in and I sat down on the hard hospital chair.

Her eyes hardly reflected the harsh fluorescent lighting.

I brought more letters this time, and I looked around the room for the best place to put them. I didn’t say goodbyes, no, I wrote them like last time.

Then I got up and laid the bouquet of unopened letters next to the dying peonies before I left the hospital room for the last time.

No spoken words were shared. No, just a bundle of letters.

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Yellow peonies were at my mother’s funeral, too. She’d insisted.