This morning, while sitting at my desk, I noticed the sky had turned a brilliant blue, and I watched weightless cumulus clouds drift across it—beautiful, untethered, ephemeral. My cinnamon-spiced tea has gone cold. The few wildflowers I brought from Distant Island hold on in the crystal vase, their stems diligently trimmed and fed—but still, the edges curl, softly surrendering to time. I realize now: I am not defying impermanence, but yearning to extend the bloom.
Flowers, as they are, do not ask us to stop their fading; they invite us to cherish them while they last. Their fleeting nature is their gift. Perhaps that’s why my friend finds them unbearable—because not everyone can meet beauty that bows to inevitability with such tenderness. Still, I see now that learning to loosen our grip and let petals fall might be part of learning how to love—and grieve—with grace.
Lately, I’ve been wondering why I sometimes tuck away an old restaurant receipt, only to forget it until it reappears, the ink faded but still legible—the name, the date, the small proof that I was there. Why keep something so trivial? Perhaps because, in that moment, it mattered. Perhaps I needed evidence that the evening was real, that I had lived it, that the version of myself who sat at that table, laughing over a meal, truly existed.
It is the same with the photographs I take, the flowers I press between book pages, the words I scribble into journals, the scraps of memorabilia I cannot bring myself to discard. I know none of it can restore what has passed. A pressed flower is no longer a blossom; a photograph is not the person who once stood smiling in the sun. Still, we hold on. These small artifacts are our quiet rituals of remembrance, the fragile proofs of a life unfolding.
And so I keep changing the water in the vase, adding sugar to the stems. I keep saving the notes and the pictures. I keep loving, even as I know that every ink mark will fade, every petal will curl, every moment slip beyond reach. In the end, perhaps that is what makes us human: to treasure the fleeting, to honor it with our care, and to hold on, even as we learn, at last, to let go.
The love of a mother will never fade in the heart of her son.
You beautifully capture what so many of us feel when we save an item some may view as trivial. A flower's fleeting presence as an invitation to cherish its beauty while it lasts is perhaps what leads us to dry or press them in the first place. We also want to preserve its scent and color because it's tied to a memory we never want to let go of.