No More Flowers

I had to buy many flowers in the last year, and it seemed like every month or every few weeks, I was having to buy a new bouquet. Though gifting flowers can be beautiful, every time I had to buy them, it felt like they were a reminder of everything that was going wrong in my life at the time. It wasn’t just a reminder that flowers are temporary and eventually wilt away, but it was a reminder that all life will as well. To buy someone flowers isn’t just an act of kindness, but in my personal life, it has been treated as a way to cheer someone up. However, to have to cheer someone up inherently means that there is something that they need cheering up for.

Last year, it felt as though life had dedicated itself to teaching me the lesson of how temporary this existence can be. So to have to buy and take care of many flowers in my household last year was another symbol of how tiring life had become. That year, I had dealt with two losses in my life, and within a few months, two members of my immediate family had also received some difficult news about their health. With the losses we had experienced recently, the gravity of health issues was something that weighed heavily and stayed on the forefront of our minds. We knew the cost of illness if it was not taken care of, and it created a thick tension while having to make consistent hospital visits for the next few months.

This time in our lives often felt so helpless, we couldn’t do anything but wait for procedures and to hope for the best. If a difficult appointment occurred or was going to happen, we would buy flowers to cheer our cherished patient. When one procedure happened, we gave them flowers while they healed and when they recovered. Many members of our family would visit the hospital and provide gifts; it felt good to know my loved ones were so cared for outside of our immediate circle. These were just the first few steps; the healing process and aftercare were when it felt the most real. Sometimes coming home and seeing a house with balloons, gifts, and flowers could be a bit suffocating. I was grateful that the worst was over, but that tension about how things could have gone lingered.

During those dark times in my life, I was lucky to be able to persevere through this exhaustion weighing like a heavy cloud over our household. I believe this resilience that was able to carry me through these difficult months was thanks to the support we received from our extended family and the sheer need to surpass this difficult time in my life. Facing these issues throughout many months had me in a split state of mind, where half of me was exhausted with the way life had been treating us, and the other half was determined to stay strong through these times for the sake of our family. I knew deep in my heart that, though there was so much at risk for us in this period of time, if I stayed strong and became a support for our family… that we would be able to make it through it.

I am deeply grateful to know that most of what remains of that time in our lives feels like a faint memory; it feels as though we crossed the finish line. Though there are always risks, and I am aware that that cloud can always come back over our house at any moment… I now know what that’s like. I have surpassed those pressures while under stressful circumstances, as well as while being a student. Though life often provides difficult lessons that prompt us to curse its hold over us, it has also given me the motivation to keep working hard and to stay strong through difficult times.

Being resilient in times of difficulty isn’t something that comes easy, but it’s something that’s worth the work. To have gone through such hardships is another reason to appreciate every day and to continue to persevere through hard times. Every day that I wake up and know that I have the privilege of not needing to buy flowers is a day that I am grateful to have my Mom, Dad, and Sister in my life. Not having to see balloons and bouquets when I walk to the living room reminds me of how lucky we are not to need them. I am grateful and enthusiastic not to need to buy flowers right now, but I am also grateful that the next time I do need to, I will have the resilience to stay strong and persevere through that time and any time after.