Sunday, August 12, 2012

I'm feeling elegaic this morning.

Sad things happen, and when they do, I'm at a loss for words.

No jokes, now -- I know, it's hard to picture me being at a loss for words, but what do you say to someone who has just lost a loved one?

Right? I can't think of anything, either.  It's hard to come up with words for something so personal and so hard to relate to.  Sure, we all lose people from time to time, but we don't all feel the same way about it and we're not at the same stage in our life when it happens, and so we mumble something about being so sorry and feel inadequate.

A better way, I think, to handle the situation, is to send some sympathy flowers.  Flowers can say a lot more than we can, at times like that, and they do more than just express sympathy; they can convey beauty, and hope, two things people need at sad times.

That's what I was thinking as I looked at the floral arrangements at Designs by Guzzardos, where that link goes to.  Not just that the flowers say "I'm sorry for you" but that the way they're set up, the colors they choose, the designs, the flowers manage to say more.  They say this will pass, and they say there is hope that the sadness will end, and they say that all wordlessly, tiny creations that just band together and gather up all the emotions someone is feeling, and then repackage them as something a little brighter and nicer.

Or am I reading too much into it?  Probably not.  A properly-done, beautiful floral arrangement manages to transcend the rote expressions of sympathy that we give each other.  There's a reason, after all, that we send flowers at times like that, and it has nothing to do with marketing and Madison Avenue and has everything to do with the fact that flowers are like poetry, only more sublime.

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