Flowering Fridays: On Impermanence & Eternity & Remembering Bill

It sort of feels like saying the sky is blue.

(Meaning =it's so obvious, I don't know if I need to say it.)

But flowers are such a reminder about the impermanent nature of life.

No matter how precious a flower is, or how sturdy — no flower can last forever.

Logically, I know this.

But rationally part of me wants the flower to live forever.

There is such radiance in the flower, such love, so much (to me, at least) a sense of the eternal and the divine that I wonder, how could a flower ever die?

It is so full of life, of beauty, of sacredness.

But, of course, the flowers do die.

Eventually.

Each flower has its own timing. Some blooms last a long time. Some only a day.

And no matter how long the flower lives, their beauty and their radiance will always live on in the hearts of those of us lucky enough to have viewed them.

I know how precious each flower is, how impermanent and how perfect each flower's journey is.

And yet, I'm always a little bit sad when the flower dies.

Because while there will always be more flowers, there will never, ever be that particular flower again.

The impermanent nature of flowers is a reminder for me to be in the now, to appreciate what is in the moment and know that nothing lasts forever.

I am in Pennsylvania this weekend grieving the passing and celebrating the life of my stepbrother-in-law, Bill, who passed away at age 38 after a five-month journey with lung cancer.

There is part of me that feels his was a flower that died too soon.

But I also know that the gift that he was to his wife, to his two kids, to his family and to ours will live on.

I will always remember Bill for his big smile, his love of Ohio State, his easy laugh and our shared love of ice cream.

So while I know that Bill, the man, is no longer blooming on this earth, I know that Bill, the spirit, blooms wide in the vastness of eternity.

It's an interesting (and sometimes confounding) paradox for me — to be both impermanent and eternal. But it's how I see flowers. It's how I see Bill. And it's how I see life.

Image: Guillardia, Garden Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida, January 2010

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Flowering Fridays is a weekly look at flowers through the lens of what they might teach us about flowering fully in our life. Past editions are here.

Comments

[Otis Fret]

It makes me think of the phrase: "Be in the world but not of it."