The Right Recipients for Her Beloved Bouquets
I’ve always loved flowers. Even when I was a songwriter, livin’ on macaroni and maybe, I always managed to put a pretty posy or two by my bedside. Then, no matter who said no to my songs or trampled my heart with golf shoes and glee, I always had something beautiful to make me feel better.
Whenever my boyfriends were out of favor and I wasn’t answering their calls, ever, ever, ever, ever again--even if they dialed my number 80 times a day as Ed used to do before I’d forgive him--a bouquet of fresh flowers would always melt my heart. Yes, even my tough little heart.
I love flowers.
About a year and a half ago, I found out my mother was dying of lung cancer and had three months to live. We’d been estranged all of my life, but even after I went to see her to say goodbye and realized she would never love me, I called a florist in Canada, asking him to make a special bouquet for Ruth.
It was Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and I knew it would be Ruth’s last. I didn’t want anything ostentatious--she hated that. Just something original and beautiful, saying I wish things had been different between us but, here, have something pretty from me anyway.
It took my mother three days to call and thank me for those flowers. Even then she indicated they were just OK. I never saw what the florist sent, but his clients include Jean Chretien, prime minister of Canada; author Margaret Atwood, singers Joni Mitchell, Paul Anka and Bryan Adams; and Martha for-God’s-sake Stewart--so I’m willing to bet the flowers were breathtaking.
Even if they had been as perfect and heartbreaking as the white lilies on Princess Diana’s coffin, my mother would have had a problem with them. Too white, perhaps. Too Christian. Too expensive. “Could a daisy kill them?” Something would have been wrong.
Part of me hoped my mother would have liked my gift, maybe even loved it because it was from her daughter. But the larger part of me knew those flowers wouldn’t be right.
In the end, I just wanted to give her something that I would love, because had she sent them to me, I might have tried to love them.
But OK, my flowers were wrong. Still, I kept trying. That was our dysfunctional dynamic after all, and I was going to see it through to the bitter end. So every week until her death, I sent my mother another bouquet, thinking maybe one of them would eventually make her happy. But six months after my mother died, my old best friend, who was still living in Canada, let it slip that each time my flowers arrived, my mother threw them away. She didn’t give them to a nursing home or a hospice downtown. She just tossed them into the garbage.
I was devastated. I shouldn’t have been because I knew her. But I was. And I still am.
But I still love flowers.
So when I saw the article in the paper about the Dream Foundation, I called right away. They fulfill wishes for adult patients in their final year of life. Part of the program’s funds are used to make and deliver bouquets to anyone who is lonely or sick or just plain needs something pretty.
I signed right up as a volunteer. Now, each Saturday morning as the sun is coming up, I roll out of bed and head my Lexus for the farmers market, where one of my colleagues delivers a truckload of leftover yellow lilies, red and orange gerbera daisies, purple parrot tulips, pink snapdragons and blue irises donated by the local growers. There are four or five of us regulars who make the bouquets and then deliver them to the special people on our routes.
They often call or write to the Dream Foundation, saying how much our flowers mean to them. And the foundation forwards those cards to us. I hang mine next to my gold and platinum records and my Emmy nomination.
Saturdays are my best days now. A lot of my Dream Foundation recipients are little old ladies. Some might even be from Canada. One or two might look a little bit like me. But absolutely nobody--nobody--has ever thrown my flowers away again.
