I wish I could re-do Dad’s funeral flowers. He died years before flowers recruited me, and I just obediently pointed to one of the standard photos on the funeral director’s laminated sheet. It might as well have been a box of washing powder for all the relevance it had to him.
If I were to do it now, he would have barley and potatoes in a pair of wellies, and there would be a copy of the Racing Post tucked into a corner, as well as a cricket ball and a wicket. It would all be held together with baler twine and probably smell faintly of Labrador. It couldn’t belong to anyone else.
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I’ve been wondering what started the unhappy shift from individuality to a state where families ask me to tell them what flowers most people have. When did we decide that if stiff lilies and Colombian roses weren’t on a coffin, it wasn’t good enough?
The fear of not conforming is real. I see true worry in people’s eyes. “We don’t know what they would have wanted” is a wail I hear often and would rather not again. Even those who had 50 years together seem stricken and frozen with indecision about whether their partner wanted to be cremated or buried, let alone what blooms to choose.
Let’s allow flowers to lead us back to a place where we find it natural to discuss our own deaths
Back before plastic floral foam put the brakes on creativity, funeral flowers were more varied. The belief that that final bouquet should be as bland as possible hadn’t yet taken over and you had a pretty good chance of being remembered with an arrangement that reflected your life.
Delphiniums and peonies in June, perhaps, for a keen gardener; giant leeks for those mornings spent on the allotment; or a tattered Ordnance Survey map topped with a simple posy along with walking boots and stick for a rambler who isn’t going to need them any more.
You can still find these imaginative memorials, of course. There are wonderful florists and flower farmers who will listen to your cherished memories, who might even come to the garden to pick the deceased’s own flowers to decorate their coffin, and create a plastic-free arrangement that is personal, and not a clone of someone else’s.
But you do need to search for them. And – here’s the rub – in those few awful days after the death of someone you love, you’ll hardly remember how to boil the kettle, let alone have the energy for scrolling through reams of florists eager to flower your event, whose listings mostly promote joyful wedding arrangements.
It’s a chance to come together and make the choice about final flowers with family, and weave laughter, tears and anecdotes into that arrangement
Upset and disorientated, you visit the funeral director and are faced with a volley of questions, delivered Gatling-gun style. Which hymns? How many service sheets? Curtains open or closed at the crematorium? Will there be vegans at the wake? So when it finally comes to flowers, it’s just easier to point, as I did, to Number 7 in Blue. A nice safe choice, which looked exactly like all the ones at every funeral I’d ever been to.
The florist down the road received the order and stuck some flowers into a block of floral foam to a standard recipe, and mourners at my dad’s funeral saw exactly the insipid flowers they expected to see and ordered the same ones when their turn came.
Back before plastic floral foam put the brakes on creativity, funeral flowers were more varied
It seems we have somehow arrived at a place where we’re onlookers at the final event in the life of someone we have loved with all our hearts. We sit in the front row, like we are in the stalls at a theatrical production we can’t remember buying tickets for, and don’t think we’re going to like very much.
We worry that we’ll stand up at the wrong time in the ceremony and glance at the funeral director to see what to do next. It is as if that person, that life-long friend or sometime lover with whom we shared hugs, arguments, laughs and too many drinks is suddenly venerable and must be spoken of in whispers.
Let’s start again. Let’s allow flowers to lead us back to a place where we find it natural to discuss our own deaths; where we can tell our families what we would like at our funerals, so they don’t flounder and drown when it does, inevitably, happen. Flowers offer an unthreatening way into this conversation, and picking or handling them can be calming and comforting.
It’s a chance to come together and make the choice about final flowers with family, and weave laughter, tears and anecdotes into that arrangement, and start the grieving process together with a flower in your hand… because, as we all know, you don’t get a second chance.