The saddest people greet you without even saying hello. My heart folds back into itself like the tides that remind me how close drowning actually is. I think back to my mom’s flower shop. How everyone that worked there put beauty into the roses they made into bouquets. How sadness filled those spaces, but so did laughter. How each florist had a lifetime of sadness to share, but they smiled at the thorns that pricked their aching hands- said it was the price to pay for making things look beautiful. They watched people plan funerals and everything in between. I humbly sat in the back room. Watched my mom comfort strangers. I felt a different type of silence and it echoed through me. That was years ago and my mom’s hands don’t work how they used to. They sold the shop. The workers dispersed like scattered storms, but their sadness still echos like thunder from far away. Life got harder for the majority. They stay connected like how the tides reach to the shore- then for a moment it all meshes together and there’s nothing left but the sea. But know that when a florist smiles, they really mean it. And when they hold flowers, they treat them like souls. It takes selflessness to give something with beauty an actual purpose. To make something for someone knowing that it won’t even last. To give something short lived another stretch of life. And as those pedals fall lazily to the cold floor, florists pick up the mess. Tidy their work space and show up again and again and again for the grieving – even through their own sadness. -AMT