I let the flowers die. I didn’t mean to but it happened. Woke up one morning, brow furrowed when I saw the petals were drooping. Blamed it on the flowers, of course. They must have been near dead when I got them, must have been on their way to dying.
I was annoyed when I picked up the vase, expecting it to be heavier than it was. I walked the vase over to the sink, pulled out the bouquet and looked inside. There was no water. Not even a drop.
I was mad at myself so I blamed the flowers — again. There must have been a certain flower in the bunch that guzzled the water, took more than its share, I thought as I filled the vase back up.
Then I blamed the florist. She should have warned me, should have given better instructions like, change the water daily, even though I already knew to do that.
I put the mostly-dead flowers back in the vase. Not ready to let them go.
What we pay attention to grows.
Later I was driving to the grocery store, still thinking about it about it, thinking about how I had let something beautiful die for no reason.
I could feel my brow in a furrow again, and for what? Because I let the flowers die? Because they grew and were cut and were given to me and I put them in a vase and forgot about them? Because forgetting makes me a bad person?
That’s when it popped into my head, something I had memorized as a kid in Sunday school —
whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things
Think about these things. Not to deny the reality of how we killed the flowers — or how our skin is breaking out at 46 years old or we fucked up at work or that person was a dick to us — because these things are true.
And they aren’t the whole truth.
Maybe we forgot about the flowers because we were tending to more important things. Maybe shit happens and things die and none of it has anything to do with us.
Or maybe it does. Maybe I let those flowers die because they reminded me of something I wanted to forget. A thing so heavy, so devastating, that your brain tries to file it away as soon as possible.
Maybe — just maybe — those flowers needed to die so that I could release the weight I was carrying, so that I could return to myself, full-bodied and ready to receive something-else. Something that might lift me.
It was really lovely meeting you, he messaged with a heart face emoji. We met through a friend the other night and I liked him immediately. An aliveness in his eye and a levity to his spirit. He told me he was an actor over tacos. I knew it, I said.
Whatever is lovely, think on these things. The tacos, the heart face emoji, the miracle of meeting a person on this strange planet who lifts us out of the desert, whose flowers feels like home.