Flowers in the Forest

It’s mid May in this part of the world, yet it already feels like spring is giving way to summer. As I had walked through the forests in the nature park where I work, my reverent excitement at the newness of emergence begins to yield into a steady summer awe. The early yellow bloomers have gone. Pops of color no longer solicit my eyes and heart to delight in novelty. Where once the plants had space to stretch, where each new species to emerge had a temporary moment in the spotlight, now a dense and green thickness abounds. Yes, the forest floor has transformed.

Flowers can live short lives. Those growing in open areas, scorched by the sun, may only hang around a few days before they wither and die. Flowers can also stick around for some time.

In my first spring in Oregon, I learned about the trillium. The flower is of some importance in local culture, its likeness ornamentally used in park logos and its name affixed to trail loops. I knew the name before I knew the flower. The first one I spotted that spring in a local park by my home had me exclaiming as if it were a famous celebrity. I later learned that the cream white petals of the trillium turn crimson when they senesce and die.

It has been a difficult couple of weeks for me, my spouse, and his family. We lost both of his grandmothers (Gram and Mema) five days apart and just before Mother’s Day. The day after Gram died, I took a hike in Forest Park with a friend and happened across several senescing trillium. I couldn’t help but think of them as metaphors for grief.

Just as in the forest, in my heart now the exuberant delights of spring have faded into thickness, to density. I feel everything extra deeply. I think of Gram and Mema as the flowers who have stuck around, both living into their 90s, and feel gratitude for knowing and loving them. I contemplate the burst of life often felt when experiencing the death of a loved one, as if the volume of the world has been turned on high. Whites transforming to crimson hues. Their deaths momentarily painting the world, their lives always remembered.