Flowers are a Symbol of Connection

I’ve never known quite how to explain my grief. The loss of someone close to you is never expected, never warranted, never quite believable. Especially when your family is so intertwined through the proximity of your lives and the experiences you share. So when you receive the phone call one night, as the knoll rings its heavy note, it’s hard to know how to react. That’s why I haven’t, really. I’ve just carried on as if nothing has happened. That’s why the funeral seemed so confusing, so harsh, so disconnected from what I have felt for the last two weeks. And that’s why the flowers stood out in the painfully quiet auditorium as a respectful nod to the meaning of memorial.

Flowers, to me, never seem quite the right thing to leave for the dead. Something so bright and full of life seems to mock what is hidden beneath the soil they rest on. It’s as if they rebuke the mourning, the loss, the pain entangled in the death they signify. It’s a jarring juxtaposition; the cold, dark finality of the engraved marble or granite above them, the sodden and fresh earth beneath them, compared with their radiant colour, a painful reminder of the prospect of growth and existence. It’s an oxymoron, a contradiction, and all those words that mean two things that don’t belong together, or two things that don’t feel as though they should be in the same place at the same time, like a widow and a newlywed. Flowers are, to some, a symbol of love, giving, joy, celebration. But next to a headstone they are merely a reminder of the soul a living thing contains, of what has been taken away by illness or tragedies outside of human control.

But maybe that’s why they are left at the place where life and death interact most closely; maybe they allow us to remember the vibrancy of the loved one that rests below them. They can contain memories of the person buried in the soil the flowers grew from, with the light they brought into the world allowing the flowers to thrive. Maybe flowers are the right thing to leave for the dead. They remind us of that persons colours; the ones in their eyes, their cheeks, their favourite clothes, maybe even their hair. They remind us of walks, of holidays and parties and wedding bouquets and impromptu spontaneous dates that make up the events of the life that has been lost. They symbolise the potential for new life out of the old, for renewal, like the bulbs that bloom every spring. They contain a spirit of life much like a human soul, and within that constant persistence, a strength, a determination to be beautiful in a place that may not warrant it. Flowers are a sign of remembrance and appreciation, a gift to the people who have done the most for us in life despite being missing from it now, a thank you for their contribution to your life. They show the human commitment to connection, because leaving flowers at the foot of the final physical form of someone lost becomes as close to a palpable thread of kinship as you can create. It’s a testament to the human desire to remember. We use poppies in November, daffodils in March, petals during marriage, and bouquets or arrangements during death. Flowers are used to commemorate life in every form.

Yet you cannot escape the fact that flowers always die. You may press them, change their water, add artificial nutrients, or attempt to save them in pictures, but they decay just the same. Nothing can last forever. I guess that’s why you leave flowers for the dead. Because no matter how vibrant the life of the person you leave that gift of flowers, death has already shown you that it wins. A wise man once said time was the biggest killer of all, because as it moves seemingly slower and slower as life concludes, as we creep further and further away from birth, yet it restricts our ability to remember and live the more experience of it we gain. Time cannot be escaped. It goes on to consume all of us, for better or worse, just as it does the flowers we leave to those we wish to remember. And unfortunately, like the falling off of petals and leaves, we lose the memories of those who have passed away – unintentionally moving on so far and so fast that we forget to reminisce about the time we shared. Time clamps down on life any time it tries to grow stronger. It serves as a reminder of our mortality, of our insignificance in an expanse undiscoverable. Yet we still persist, adding colour and new life to our homes and our graves to remind ourselves that while we may be insignificant in the uncaring game of time, we still have the connections to the people we love, that we cultivated over years of tenderness and care, and which cannot be erased in death. Flowers act as a form of resistance to time’s attempt to make us forget.

Until eventually, the last wreath is placed. Some graves have been empty of flowers for months, years, decades, centuries. But that is not the fault of the people who loved them. It is the cruel workings of time against legacy, which ends with millions of treasured souls being reduced to crumbling stones behind decrepit abandoned churches. But while the bunches of flowers may not be replaced every week by a new generation too young to remember but too connected to care, and while they may not be re-dug and re-sown every spring by the devout caregiver or the kind grounds keeper, the life the flowers have left in the soil remains. Grass grows higher, wildflowers take hold, and lichen adheres to stone. Life is everywhere in death, in the flowers around the gravestone and in the hearts of those who knew the life once lived. But death always takes people away from those they love and are loved by. Flowers can’t hinder that. Slowly, gradually, people decay past the point of their fullest bloom, until they are eventually left to be remembered through the nature that surrounds the place they rest.