If you have visited a garden center recently, you have seen that many of us have flowers on our minds. My husband mentally sketches his annual planting intentions while snow still covers the ground. I admit that he drives me a little crazy with his queries: “Do you think we should go with one color? I could mix different tones of the same basic color. What do you think about going ‘rainbow’ for a change…” On it goes until I convince him not to plan too much until he sees what local vendors have to offer. I encourage him further to make his selections based upon the durability of the available blooms. In the end, the flowers that surround our home are always beautiful.
From the time he was a little boy, Mike helped his dad to plant flowers at home and at the cemetery. Though Mike’s dad never planted before Memorial Day weekend, he always managed to find just the right arrangements to adorn Mike’s grandmothers’ graves on Mother’s Day. Later, Mike’s parents determined what annuals were needed for their family graves and they made their purchases accordingly. Timing was everything, which is the reason they only browsed for flowers around Mother’s Day. Apparently, they are not the only experts in this area. Though cemeteries in the Midwest sport numerous artificial flowers today, they will be ablaze with living blossoms in just two weeks.
at my parish, our founding pastor’s passing reminded us all of the pain of our losses. As we recount stories from Father Farrell’s life among us, we realize once again the importance of those whom we mourn. Whether they are our mother or father, our husband or wife, our child, our cousin or our friend, our loved ones offered us their affection as best they could. At times, they achieved heroic success. Their presence brought great joy or growth or satisfaction. At times, they failed and their presence caused precisely the opposite. In the end, we mourn our loved ones, sometimes because of their humanity and sometimes in spite of it.
It seems to me that there is something very God-like about our remembrances of those who pass away. Whether or not our mourning includes flowers at the cemetery, we look upon our lost loved ones with different eyes. After bidding our final farewells, our memories often become less focused upon the failures in our relationships. Rather, we recall the happy and amusing and adventurous times we shared. In our family, we lost my dad when my siblings and I were very young. Within a few months, he had become a saint in our collective consciousness. Years later, when our mother married a good, but very different man, I marveled at his bravery in attempting to fill my dad’s shoes. Yet, upon my step-dad’s passing, the phenomenon occurred once again. A second father-turned-saint occupied our memories.
The scriptures call us to work at our love for those we mourn and for those who remain with us just as carefully as my husband works at his flowerbeds. Peter (Acts 10:25-48) and John (1 John 4:7-10) invite us to imitate the love Jesus exhibited among God’s people. They insist that, when it comes to love, no distinctions are to be made among God’s children. In John’s gospel (15:9-17), Jesus invites us to “…love one another as I have loved you.” I believe that we are heeding these passages at some level because our hearts ache whenever we lose a loved one. They also ache, sometimes more so, when we fail to love one another here. My husband takes great care with his flowers because the results are heavenly. Jesus invites to take great care when we love because the results provide us a taste of heaven itself.
This Mother’s Day, we celebrate love. We can take another lesson in love from the lengths we go to in honoring our mothers. Whether they are here with us or they have passed, we honor them. After all, they had a hand in giving us life itself. God invites us to look upon everyone we meet with the desire to honor him or her. After all, they have a hand in determining the quality of the moment we share. No flowers or chocolates are necessary. We need only to offer the love which is required at the moment.
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