Sunflowers: Remembering Mum

Dear Mum,

Today is the day. It’s two years since you died.

Time has gone so fast. It doesn’t feel like you’ve been gone this long. The pain is still there. I miss you.

I want to connect with you. I know we have a bond and memories but I needed something else.

I looked for freesias, your favourite flower. The ones I saw in the shops looked wilted and not good enough. It seemed it wasn’t meant to be.

I felt distress that I couldn’t get that right for you. Silly, I know, as you would have told me it doesn’t matter. But it does.

Then I remembered sunflowers.

The last flowers I bought you were a bouquet of sunflowers. It felt like a strange choice initially. Such cheerful vibrant flowers for a dying woman. Then I knew they were perfect.

In the sterile, clinical hospice environment, those little rays of sunshine were welcome. You remarked on how they lit up the room.

Every day I saw you, after checking on you, I’d look to the sunflowers.

They became more than a gift and an ornament. They signified life; the present and the end.

It became my mission to keep those blooms alive. I would constantly water and nurture them.

I know now it was because I felt so useless. Nothing I could do would keep you alive. Your sunflowers were the closest I had to hope.

As the days passed you declined.

The sunflowers sympathised and joined you. They began to wilt.

You became less conscious.

I tried to revive the flowers. Water couldn’t do the job.

I tried to bring back my chatty, opinionated mum. I couldn’t do the job.

The flowers declined.

You died.

One of my most sorrowful memories is emptying your room of your possessions.

I would not let anyone touch the sunflowers.

Just as I held your hand until your last breath, I would be with the sunflowers at their end.

I emptied the vase of water. I looked at you lying there so peaceful. You were empty of life now too.

I laid the dying sunflowers on the garden. They would not be buried or destroyed.

Your sunflowers lay on the earth; the fertile ground that once gave them life.

I sit here now and look at the sunflowers I bought. My heart hurts.

I wonder how it will feel to watch them die. Am I prepared? I don’t know.

You are the sunflower that never dies, Mum.

Your vibrancy will not wither.

You are the bright memories that keep on shining.

With love always,
Lisa xx