Someone who is related to our parish in several ways had twins on Sunday and the younger twin (N) died on Wednesday. N had been born with heart problems and she wasn’t expected to live even those three days. Jon did the burial service for her on Friday and my contribution was to stay home and pray. (I’m a younger twin, female, and my heart stopped at birth. They managed to get my heart going again but I was in ICU for three weeks. In other words, this death hit really close to home and I knew that I wasn’t going to make it through the funeral.) Jon said the funeral went well and the burial was good as well.

Yesterday, N’s aunt (who is my age) called and told us that there were flowers on the piano in her memory. This morning, N’s great-grandmother told Jon and I to take the flowers home with us after church. Jon replied that he thought we should put them on her grave instead and I agreed. After all, they were given in N’s memory and flowering her grave seemed an appropriate use for them.

After the service at the church where she was buried, I took the vase out and started taking the arrangement apart. (I was just going to put the straight bouquet on there but I found that the individual pieces were stuck in floral foam, so I had to take it apart cutting by cutting.) About halfway through this process, some of the kids and their parents came out to the grave with Jon. Jon asked them to each take a cutting and lay it on the grave and we finished laying them out. The gravesite looks so much prettier now and it was a very meaningful way for the kids to deal with N’s death.

It amazes me how simple things like this can be so profound and have such a healing effect.