Remembering the Unknown

The shortcut I took home from football practise took me through a park and, every week without fail, there would be a fresh bunch of flowers under the same tree. At first I never thought much of it. After all, flowers in a park weren’t an odd sight. It was only once I became aware that they were changing each week that I realised they weren’t planted there. They were simply resting against the base of the tree.

I stopped to look at them once I noticed how subtly out of place they were. They were still wrapped in plastic, with the price sticker affixed front and centre. Someone had spent £25 on the bouquet, only to leave it in the middle of a park. I took note of the tree, but there seemed to be nothing special about it. The park itself was relatively nondescript – it was too small to be much of a destination for anyone but the immediate neighbours. I had never thought of it of anything beyond a quick cut through.

That night I went searching for some mention of an event that could have sparked the necessity for a memorial of some kind. It took me ten minutes just to find the name of the park so I could begin to comb through internet pages about it. There was very little – a few mentions of it in articles about charity picnics, a blogger who had featured it in a post for its rare species of fungi. Nothing tragic. Nothing that would lend itself to a shrine made of £25 flowers.

Despite my lack of success in searching for a reason for the flowers, they were always there. The colours and varieties changed but they were always vivid, brighter than could ever have been achieved naturally. The price on the sticker fluctuated but it was always high. I started to add up the cost in my head each time I passed – within a month it was pushing £200. Whoever was leaving them wasn’t scrimping or starting to decrease their spending. Whatever or whoever they were remembering was clearly important.

Two months after I first paid attention to the memorial, I added to it. I couldn’t help but notice there was only ever the one bunch of flowers. Someone cared a lot, but only one person. It didn’t feel right. So, without any idea what I was memorialising, I bought a bouquet of lilies from the corner shop and lay them beside that week’s extravagant bouquet. 

Side by side, mine looked pitiful. They certainly didn’t cost £25 – I didn’t have that much to spare – and they were tiny and pathetic in comparison to the pink and white roses. I almost picked my addition up and took them away, but I wanted whoever was trying to remember someone to know they weren’t alone. In spite of how sad my efforts looked, hopefully they would be understood as a show of solidarity.

For the next three weeks, I kept leaving flowers. The stranger never took a week off or dwindled in their generosity. It became a comfortable routine, to stop off at the shop on my way back from practise and choose the brightest bouquet they had. If I couldn’t match the other donation in price, I could at least join in with their extravagant colour scheme. I hoped I wasn’t offending whoever had started the practise. They left my flowers be, when they could have thrown them away, so I took that as I sign I was welcome to continue.

When I saw the note, I panicked. It was set atop my flowers, clearly waiting for me to arrive. Someone had carefully poked it between two now-wilting stems so it wouldn’t blow away. I unfolded it with trembling hands, imagining the worst. Someone was angry, they were going to ask that I stop, they were going to shout at me for encroaching on their personal form of grief. Rather than any of that, two words were written in neat handwriting right in the centre of the paper, the letters so cloistered together that it took me a moment to decipher them.

Thank you

         I swapped out my flowers as normal, laying down the rainbow tulips I had found, clearly artificially dyed. They had seemed perfect. Scrambling around in my pockets I was dismayed to find the stub of a pencil I had once stolen from IKEA, but no form of paper that wasn’t a receipt. It felt wrong to be leaving rubbish at the site of this little shrine, so instead I carefully tore off the bottom of the note that had been left for me. I had so many questions – but none of them seemed right to ask. As much as I wanted to know the identity of the other person and the story behind their flowers, I only left my own two words, carefully tying the strip of paper around one of their stems so they would know it was a reply meant for them.

You’re welcome

         I kept leaving the flowers, but we exchanged no more notes. One year later, I had to sell my flat and move on, a new job dragging me far from home. There was plenty I would miss, but the flowers were high on the list. I’d stopped keeping a running total of the cost my anonymous friend had spent on the flowers they’d left, but it had to be thousands of pounds. My own total was more modest, but I knew I had invested a couple of hundred into remembering the unknown. Even as I considered everything else that I could have spent the money on, I couldn’t quite bring myself to regret my weekly visit to the corner shop for a bouquet.

         I left a second note, just over twelve months after the first, explaining that I was moving and wouldn’t be able to leave flowers anymore. I thanked the stranger for letting me join in with their act of remembrance and assured them they would always be in my thoughts. It was written in a proper card this time, pre-planned and left with my final bunch of flowers. I was too much of a coward to build in time for a reply, not wanting to hear that my leaving was going to sadden someone.

         Hundreds of miles away, one week later, I couldn’t stop thinking about the tree and the flowers and the unknown person or event we were paying homage to. For the first time in months, there would only be one bunch of flowers resting there. It didn’t feel right.

         Pulling up a webpage for a flower delivery company back in the city, I found their phone number and typed it in. When someone picked up they patiently listened as I enquired whether I could place an order not to be delivered to a residence or a person, but to a tree in the middle of a tiny park in the part of town no one went unless they lived there. There was a long pause and an awkward cough before the person on the other end of the line informed me they could probably do that.

         I handed over my payment details and told them to pick the most cheerful flowers they had and to look for the tree right in the middle of the park, with one bouquet already waiting beneath it. When I finally hung up, I felt a blanket of calm settle over my nerves. Despite the fact I was surrounded by unpacked boxes and didn’t know a single person within a hundred mile radius, I felt better knowing there would be two bunches of flowers under the tree.