Not really sure I understood flowers…till now.

This Thursday is four weeks since Chris passed away.  Sometimes it seems like a second has gone by and other times it feels like 20 years…or 1000.

What I know for certain is how many of our lives are changed forever.

As time goes by, I’m sure I’ll have more perspective on various stages and aspects of the ‘grieving’ part of the journey, but I wanted to focus on one particular area for the blog post tonight.

Flowers. Yah, I knew I should get Ingrid flowers on special occasions (like weekends for example!) and flowers were good for mothers and as a host gift for dinner perhaps.  What I had totally overlooked until these past weeks is how flowers could have affected us personally during this time of loss.

In that first week after Chris was gone, our house filled up with flowers from so many organizations and people…including many of you.  Thank you.  I acknowledged what the flowers represented, but something more was at work.  Whenever we entered the house, many times after returning from difficult trips to the funeral home for example, the scent of the flowers would greet us as the door opened and we walked down the hall.  In our darkest moments, the colour and life of the plants and flowers gave us hope that life was beautiful and should be celebrated.

I don’t think I’ll ever look at (or smell) a flower arrangement in the same way again.

ps These are just a couple of pics of the actual flower arrangements taken by none other than Steve Lacoursiere….when he wasn’t working 20 hours per day on the videos in preparation for the service! Thanks Steve.

pps There is one flower arrangement in particular that will receive it’s own blog post…that’s coming next week.