I Know, But I Don't So I Wish You Well

While I did have a good relaxing weekend--got to spend time with one of my best friends, Emily--it was also a pretty bad week for an alarming number of my friends that lost pets.

When Frodo, my toy poodle/fox terrier mix, died, the two months after that, I wasn't sane. I was hearing his bark and running outside as if Dad left him out there again. I'd wake up thinking he was cold and needed a blanket when I knew damn well he was buried in our backyard under fresh snow. It wasn't pretty but I'd just lost a dear human friend the year before and I didn't have a gauge for the grief of losing a pet that was a huge part of my day to day life.

As if there is one, but I'll get to that.

My cat died six months later. Both my cat and dog weren't euthanized but if I could go back, I would have taken that route. Watching my dog die of congestive heart failure over a few days and then watching a tumor growing on my cat, lonely in the basement because it kept bursting, were traumatic. I can't imagine they were happy to suffer through it as well. Yet it was because I saw their suffering that I was able to gracefully let my mother go. I don't find in mercy in the kind of hope that makes people dangle those they love on the miserable edges of a finished life. It's not even selfish to say that those who go on living need to let go rather than prolong the grief. I still feel the guilt of how my cat and dog died, but I am at peace with my mom's passing.

As I was saying, there is no gauge, no way to prepare, but I have a hard time bringing people close. I think of the misery of what it would be to lose the family I already have. I even think of their misery if I go first. And then I don't think about it because those thoughts can never prepare me for the reality. 

So while I know grief takes on many forms, I also can't tell you I was ever more or less despondent with any incident. There's not a ranking and I despise when people try to compare grief. It's always a black hole with no edges. Whether you lose a child or a baby squirrel you were trying to nurse back to health, if you ever got the warm fuzzies from that life, then your grief swallowed you. 

Time does factor in. Even though I feel the clench of loss and shed tears for all of them still, my grief is beyond the hole without edges. I can somewhat recall the floating nothingness but I can't tell you I know how you feel. Pain is not something we tend to remember vividly, no matter how much we think so.

Because it's funny like that. At one of my lowest points, I went mentally numb and cut myself but didn't feel it. A sense of wonder crept in and I kept dragging the scissors over the cut and the nerves were dead. It's not the sadness that is most dangerous, but that numbness beyond it. When we're crying and sulking, we are feeling and processing, but when it stops, when someone seems serene, you best believe that is where you have to keep an eye on someone. Pain can reach a point where it simply becomes ineffective in warning us of what is wrong. While severe pain may resurface and feel familiar, it is not ever the same. We do not remember; fresh pain will always just feel like the worst pain. We can even empathize to the point of physical pain, but...

I'll never tell you I know how you feel or pretend I'm an expert on what you're going through. Those places are lonely and the people around us will feel helpless. They'll try to empathize or cheer you up and it will probably piss you off or add a layer of guilt for pushing them away. Let people annoy you and hover on the edges. They're there because they want to be, so the guilt is one-sided. They want to make sure you're feeling, that you're not going numb, that you're not suddenly euphoric and generous as so many people on the edge of suicide sometimes are. Your anger probably makes them relieved that you're exhibiting any emotion at all.

You might push people out of your life. That happens. Sometimes your grief is making them depressed or frustrated and they need to move on. Sometimes you'll also bring people in who understand you better. You will never be the same and you don't want to be. Your life from then on is without the one that died and learning to find the edges and see around it means you can't focus on making everyone else okay with how you adapt. It doesn't make you or them good or bad--it means you're incompatible and you move on.

So all I can do for my friends in their time of loss is say that I hope I can be there on the edges. I hope our paths, even if they separate, will cross again. I want you to find your new life on the other side of the chaos, whether you bring anyone with you or have to leave your old life behind.

I know your pain, but not really, so I just wish you well.

Flower Power and Meanings

Ooo, why not flex some of my florist muscle with this one!

In case, you haven't caught on (and it is missable so don't feel oblivious), these posts are becoming inspired by the introduction of the character that appears in the color-porn feature I've been adding to the end of each post. In the last one, we had Freesia promised for today, which is the name of a soapy smelling flower (if that candle in Cracker Barrel was accurate), so why not lead into her with a post about flowers?

This could be a book or twelve in its entirety since there's no real way to cover all of the meaning associated with flowers. Roses alone have a catalog of 'meanings' by color: red (passion/love), yellow (caring/friendship), white (I can't forget you). There are a ton of natural varieties and many more manmade/cultivated varieties. Flowers themselves are quite simple and rewarding to hybridize-- alstroemeria (also called Peruvian lily), a customer favorite for their price and beauty alike, are only cultivated in a few greenhouses over the entire world and are one of the easiest to vary. Wikipedia alone lists 122 named varieties, with most of them being South American.

Stargazer (oriental lily)

Easter lily

Lilies tend to be a widespread favorite. Stargazers are among the most visually captivating and smell fantastic. Easter lilies are the most powerfully fragrant, but like all lilies, have messy pollen clustered stamens once bloomed (if you're a lily lover, then you know that a barely opened pair of scissors or a pair of rubber gloves is handy for stripping those off-- lily pollen stains bright yellow). Lilies are another variety that have just as many meanings as varieties and, while you tend to see them a lot at funerals, I've always thought of them as 'fireworks flowers', looking like just-popped explosions of light.

Fall mum varieties

Sticking with the most salable all-season varieties I dealt with as a florist, another popular showstopper flower with a staggering amount of varieties: chrysanthemums (mums). You've probably seen a ton of them hitting stores for Mother's Day since they are an inexpensive and hardy favorite along with petunias, begonias, pansies, daisies-- 'mom flowers.'

Spider Mum

Aside from the common miniature varieties you buy potted, we also got in the long stem cut variety of spider mums, one of my personal favorites next to stargazers in terms of sheer aesthetics (another 'fireworks flower'). You'll often see rainbow varieties when sold cut; like carnations, they absorb water fast so soaking the stems in food dyes gives brilliant results. Natural varieties can be very colorful as well. Again, meanings vary by color, but the overall sentiment of a mum is happiness and celebration.

Belladonna

But why not jump away from what you find in your florist shop and play with some deadly beauties? Belladonna, the beautiful lady also known as deadly nightshade, a shy drooping bloom resembling the conservative skirt of a ballgown that opens to reveal a brilliant sinister center. While not pictured here, it grows alongside it, large shining berries, black as night, that you do NOT want to ingest. Beautiful to look at-- high shine like mirrors and black as marbles but I can't say I'd be tempted to eat it, especially since it's not a common color in flora.

Beautiful nerium/peach oleander flower

No part of a deadly nightshade plant is fit to eat as is. It is, however, used sparingly in medicines for its anti-inflammatory and numbing properties. Many people aren't aware that tomatoes are in the nightshade family. You may have been cautioned not to eat tomatoes, stems, leaves etc. but the compounds it shares with its nightshade brethren are NOT in toxic levels (or put more plainly, you'd get sick from over-consumption alone before ever accumulating toxicity). Also in this family? Oleander, foxglove, larkspur and hemlock. You'll recognize some of these as herbs and flowers.

The more you flip through larger varieties, the more you see that many of them are very catch-all in the meanings department, most meanings created to sell them, if we're being perfectly honest. You don't get a lot of 'negative' meanings; most inspire love, beauty, grace, friendship, memory, kindness, calm, shyness, honor. I can't say it wouldn't be hilarious for the odd practice of buying negative flowers for your enemies to crop up. Even the poisonous ones are breathtaking.

To wrap this one up, how about a speed round? I'll throw out a couple quick ones with less conventional meanings/origins.

<-------Plumeria (frangipani)- connected with spirits and ghosts

Yarrow (aka Key Flower; really just found this while looking for 'flowers meaning key

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Some of my runners-up for favorite: gardenia, queen anne's lace, and peonies. Gardenias and peonies smell and look fantastic, but I always loved the story of  Queen Anne's lace. What an odd flower to grow mostly flat and white like lace, yet have that pinprick of a tiny violet bloom, truly as if the lacemaker pricked their finger with the needle they wove it with.

Flowers can bring an unconventional hidden meaning into any story, one that can be tragically misconstrued. The poisonous flower picked for its beauty and gifted to a loved one could be seen as an intent to kill them. Culturally, flowers could have vastly different meanings. The color red is lucky in some cultures, yet ill-fortuned in others. White could be a color of purity, but is also the color of mourning. Color has its own context despite assigned meanings. Often a created convention is not as commonly held as we think. The best place to hide evil intent is in beautiful things, be they aesthetic or just presented as safe. When I use them in stories, I like to delve into those possible hidden meanings. Sometimes they can inspire a plot I might not have thought of otherwise.

So now we move onto another color-porn selection!

Freesia's hair was always meant to be a deep reddish brown. I needed her character to be grounded, yet with a taste of that notorious red-headed temper. She is my wounded animal type, skittish but defiant against being victimized again. She sees through a lot of the petty and frivolous aspects of human behavior, but displays a hopeful naivete when her defenses exhaust her.

As for her eyes, I wanted something cooler than Krose's warm violet brown yet not too dusky/cold. It's not Freesia's intention to be cold so she needed a cool rich violet to portray the guarded softness within. There's probably a shade deeper peeking from the pupil's borders, but I chose this purple and brown for the visceral draw of them and their link to her (with an artist's consideration for their complements as well).

I don't mean for that to sound pretentious. Sometimes it might. I'm not waving the expert flag, just saying this artist likes them together!

As for Freesia, perhaps there's a touch of the shrinking violet impression, so I wanted her to challenge that as much as fit it. I think even the starkest personality conflicts are found warring in the same vessel and this is true in her as well. She tries to be light and friendly, but it can seem forced and transparent for what it's trying to hide. She is broken at first, but she hangs on the edges of a new life, drawn to being a part of it. Because of that need for acceptance, she gives her entire being to learning how to be the best.

Up next: our boy with a Purpose, Pierait. What is a human without a proper soul? This guy!

So, my garden of kinder-grownups, are you man enough to tell me what flowers resonate with you? Is it smell, aesthetics, size or poisonous qualities that make you shiver? Spill it below!