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Health & Fitness

BLOG: How Flowered Memories of our Elders Furnish Us Everlasting Blooms

Talk to your elders about flowers, and what certain kinds meant to them. It forges your bond with them and helps them exercise their memory capacity. Help them keep their blooms from fading.

There are so many reasons to love flowers. Their beauty can be breath taking and their fragrance intoxicating. But I believe our love of flowers goes far beyond what we see and smell. For most of us, our love of certain flowers is connecting to someone we love. Often, that person is a beloved elder.

I have a lot of flower connections! My love of flowers began in childhood. My earliest memories are of tiger lilies growing beside my aunt’s dining room window. They were orange with elongated black spots. It seemed to me there were hundreds of them and they almost did not look real. Just thinking about them, brings to mind the humid summer days, the smell of the red clay dirt, and the sounds of cicadas in the huge “bean tree” in our front yard.

Going to my aunt’s was always a treat during my childhood. Her Southern California home was modest compared to her gardens. My uncle had built her beautiful flower beds along the high cement walls on both sides of her house. Instead of bricks, he used shells and rocks, and smooth pieces of colored glass that he picked up at the beach. But the best thing in auntie’s gardens was her fuchsias.

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Their bright purple and pink blooms looked like tiny Chinese lanterns. I still endeavor to grow them. Sometimes they only survive for me a season or two, but I persist. When I look at them, I see more than just a plant with colorful blooms. I think of my Aunt who always was glad to see me. Who took me anywhere I wanted to go, fed me anything I wanted to eat, and just seemed to enjoy my company.

My granddaddy loved crepe myrtles. My daddy’s daddy was a very big man. His girth seemed almost too big to come through my granny’s kitchen door. The shot-gun house had brick pillars holding up the front porch. On each side of the pillars were crepe myrtle trees that my granny had planted for her husband.

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My granddaddy died when I was around five, but I still remember him – his kindness, his humor, and his love for crepe myrtles. Granny had to sell the home place. Years later, I returned to where granddaddy grew up. The place was abandoned. The house had been moved away. The windmill was broken and laying in the field. But crepe myrtles were still growing where the front porch once stood.

My mother’s garden changes every year, but one thing remains the same – morning glories grow everywhere. She just seems to have a knack for getting them to grow. They grow on fences, they grow in pots, and some even grow in the gravel driveway! So morning glories say “home” to me.

No matter where I see them growing, I always think of my momma. She taught me so much about raising plants, but more importantly, she taught me about what’s important in life. I will always try to grow morning glories. Maybe someday, I’ll get good at it!

What fond memories do you have that are connected to flowers? Do you remember the first corsage you received? What is your older loved one’s favorite flower?

Talk to your elders about such things in their lives. Cause them to think back, to exercise their memory, to recall specific details for you. Such tasks improve their memory, forestall loss of memory. So do it often with them.

I can safely bet there’s a great story behind their love of certain flowers. These are the flowers whose blooms do not fade – the flowers of their memories.

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