Last weekend I drove four hours to spend the weekend with my best friend. It wasn’t a social call; I was there to support her and her family through her mother’s funeral.
At the end of the service, the funeral home offered to bring the flowers to my friend’s home the next day. We had arranged for a friend to help with that task but took the funeral home up on the offer to bring them later. Having one less task to manage was very helpful.
I warned my friend the flowers might be overwhelming.
The smell and visual effect of walking into my house after Tony’s funeral is burned into my nostrils. I had friends gather and deliver it all to my house before I got home. His casket spray lay across the island, vases covered the table, floor stands propped up in the kitchen. It was like I’d brought the funeral home with me, and it reeked. It’s a smell I’ll never forget.
Sunday morning the funeral home arrived at my friend’s house with all the flowers. The smell didn’t hit us initially as everything was brought inside. Shortly after the delivery we went out to breakfast. Then we came home and that’s when the scent hit us.
She immediately knew what I had told her about. It’s just not something you know until you know. A bunch of flowers sounds like it would smell so lovely. Except when you’ve planned and attended a funeral for your loved one, you realize that flowers can actually smell like death.
Once you can thin the herd and send some home with others, it’s not so bad. And even though the smell is obnoxious, you also have space to appreciate that all those flowers mean it’s an outpouring of love. Even funeral flowers represent the duality of grief.
