Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

People process grief in different ways. Some throw themselves into work, either physical labour or intellectual challenge, which provide an alternative to the maelstrom of emotion. Some take up soothing, mechanical, repetitive tasks like washing dishes or sorting linen or cross-stitch embroidery. 

We are told about the healing power of nature: watching the sunrise, seeing butterflies fluttering through colorful flowers, going on forest walks or climbing hills to reach a summit. 

It would take a cultural anthropologist to sort through the myriad alternatives and make a specific recommendation to suit each distinctive individual. 

Years ago, at the wedding of a dear friend whose mother had an acerbic tongue, I was warned to hold my own and refrain from response, as the lady had no filter, and had shown all her life zero awareness of the feelings she was hurting by speaking as she habitually did. Fortunately, I did promise to refrain, and that restraint was required, as it turned out. She insulted her own daughter while we were dressing her for the wedding: ‘Thank goodness she has finally lost weight!”, she said. “At least she can fit into this dress”. I excused myself and left the room, and took several deep breaths in the corridor. I may have jumped up and down, a few times, in all my bridesmaidery finery. 

Human beings are sometimes appallingly inappropriate in their single-minded drive for whatever is in their own focus at times of stress. I did not have to live with my friend’s mother. I only had to grit my teeth for two days and smile and make a speech, and wish them well, and leave. 

Funerals, too, are times of great communal stress. Whenever numbers of people come together, chaos is almost inevitable. 

At a funeral last week, several incidents occurred of interest to cultural anthropologists. Different societies have different bereavement and burial customs, and the custom followed at that funeral was that the body of the person who had died was laid out in his parents’ home for two days, followed by a cremation. 

On the first day, the casket was open, and the people sat around it and offered their condolences and support to the grieving parents of the deceased. Coffee and tea and refreshments were served to those out in the garden in the marquees. 

A famous cricketer, related to the widow of the man who had died, came to pay his respects. And - to my amazement - I saw a group of women in their 40s line up to request to take selfies with this celebrity, with the body of the dead person lying there right next to them. Seeing me staring at them in total astonishment, they invited me to join them. I told them I was not a fan. And that was the understatement of the year. 

Later in the proceedings, I saw a lady I had never seen before go and stand looking at the face of the dead man, and then deliberately move aside the velvet ropes that had been placed around the casket and step right up to him and touch him all over his face. To be fair, her husband had been trying to stop her, but was pushed aside with the force of a bulldozer. Crying, this woman explained to me that she felt entitled to do this, because he had been like a son to her. She felt like his mother. 

I said his actual mother would be surprised to know that. All these years, she had thought she was the only one. I had found it offensive to see this lady touching my brother’s beloved face. Every protective, territorial feeling I had was rampant. 

The worst outrage, though, was perhaps the most mundane. Returning home after the cremation, we found the house bare. All the flower arrangements, wreaths and bouquets, including those sent to my mother and myself, personally, as expressions of love and support from dear friends, had been removed. 

Where have all the flowers gone? I asked. 

The person who had made the arrangements said : oh, sorry, but they are taken with the hearse. I was told by some of my friends that the funeral parlours resell the flower arrangements, and that it is big business. I could not believe it. But apparently some do - and if you leave floral arrangements on the graves of your loved ones at the cemetery, people steal them. One friend said she now breaks up the floral arrangements her family take to the cemetery, and that she scatters the flowers on her father’s grave by hand, to prevent this happening. 

Were the flowers resold? Or were they burnt together with the casket at the crematorium? Does it matter, at all, given that the flowers were only going to last in their beauty for a day or two, at the most? And in any case, there is a superstition that funeral flowers should not be kept in the house after the person has been buried or cremated. 

But it mattered to me. All these incidents, small in themselves, felt like disrespectful violations. I know this is because of the great loss we have suffered, and the intense grief we are feeling, which magnifies everyday human actions and their impact. Perhaps I did not want to lose my place in the hierarchy of grief, or admit that anyone else could have loved my brother as we did. 

But I went to the flower markets and got all the colourful flowers I could find, from the buckets of flowers on Eye Hospital Road: big bunches of gold and orange and red and yellow, like fireworks, in every available vase and jug, on every windowsill and table, to light up the house. Much more vibrant than the white ones that were sent to us for the funeral. 

We are told playing the music my brother loved will help us think of him with joy. So, now all the hundreds of people have gone, we can do that. And he can hear it, and be happy, in heaven. 

And I can plant some butterfly flowers at his grave, so that no one here on earth can take the flowers away.