A World of Misfits

Samuel

I love funerals. Don't get me wrong, I hate funerals, you know, as a human being. But as a florist, I love funerals. It's the only place where everybody gets flowers. In various moments of life, people will receive flowers, mostly women. The flowers are for the bride at a wedding and around the girl's wrists at prom. Women receive flowers when their boyfriends do something wrong, or when they do something right, like propose. There's flowers for births, baptisms, birthdays, valentine's day. But funerals are the only place where everybody gets them. Often, for funerals, the flowers must be personalized. This happens a lot when it's a man who dies. Like it's not enough to send flowers to a dead man, you need to make them special. People will ask that we represent how cheerful someone was through flowers, or how focused he or she was about life. At first, I took these demands very seriously. I would spend hours making ornaments and flowers crowns of white and blue flowers, and in the middle, a bird of paradise would stand out, like it's about take flight. But I realized, with time, that no matter what I do, people cry, tell me it's beautiful, then they cry some more. After spending so much time on special cremations that were going unnoticed, I decided to make a catalog. In there, I have a specific pattern for every mood or quality I may be ask to present in flowers. And sometimes, when people are grieving, they ask for the weirdest thing. Once, a woman asked for war flowers for her veteran husband. What are war flowers? White, blue and red like the American flag? Or are they poppies, the symbolic flower from the battlefields. Do you know how hard it is to get fresh poppies? I mean half of the varieties are illegal to order because you can make opium with them, and the rest of them, like California poppies, they wilt before the end of the day. Once, for a woman's funeral, someone asked me to make a severe looking bouquet. Flowers can't be severe, they are the incarnation of joy, beauty and everything that is nice. Severe flowers...I'll make you a bouquet of weeds, yeah.

***

I stand in the far corner of the room, unnoticeable. It's my third funeral at Parks Funeral Home and I stood in this corner for all three of them. I like Parks, it's a fancy place. On the walls, there are painting of mountains or the sea, peaceful things, you know. In the main entrance, there's a big red rug and when you walk on it, you can feel through your shoes how bouncy and soft it is. Every time, I just feel like taking my shoes off and dancing on this rug. But funeral homes are not the place for my spontaneous moments. The exposition room is gigantic, the floors are always shiny and there's a lot of windows. When it's sunny outside, this room looks like the inside of a museum, very elegant and refine. But right now it's pouring outside, I guess the universe knew it wasn't a time to rejoice. People all around me are crying, blowing their noses in fancy ass handkerchief. That's a thing with old people, they still use handkerchief, which is absolutely disgusting and utterly fascinating. They walk around the place, saying words like "I'm sorry for your loss" and "he's in a better place", then, in unison, they blow their noses in little squares of tissue and put the thing back in their pockets. This man they are crying, he was a banker and he was wealthy. Everybody in the room is dressed in very nice clothes, and not just because it's a funeral. I can spot Cartier watches and Coach handbags. On the floor is a parade of Italian leather turned into shoes and the click clack of expensive heels on the freshly polished floor. I feel out of place in my simple black pants and black shirt. But, since it's not polite to ask for the money for the flowers before the service, I have to wait around to ask at the end. And, of course, it's not Ursule's job to wait around, it's mine. Ursule is the brain of La vie en rose, the name of the shop, I'm just the person who does the bouquets, the deliveries, the cleaning, the orders, the events, the publicity and who feeds the fish. So, actually, I'm the brain and she's the name. And yes, we have a fish swimming in with the water flowers, his name is Cauliflower. Ursule is a strange human being. French born, five foot one with white hair and a heart condition due to her weight, she barely passes through doorframes but she's never out of breath. You would think, with that much meat on the woman, she would need a lot of oxygen to aliment all these cells, but no! She talks...she talks so much. And she never stops. Her life is just a long conversation out loud with herself and sometimes some words from other people slip in. She never runs out of words, and I feel like I ran a marathon whenever I listen to her talk. Ursule came to America in her late 40s, and now she's toping 53 and still can't pronounce the h in hair, so I'm often told my air looks nice. Her daughter, Maude, who's 25, still lives in France, and she calls every day to tell her mother about her life. They have super long conversation in French that Ursule feels she absolutely needs to translate to me. Ursule is one piece of work, that's for sure, but my life wouldn't be the same without her high pitch "bonjour" every morning.

And as I'm standing in my corner, thinking of this huge tip I might get at the end of the service, I see a tall, young girl, with a just-over-the-shoulder haircut, sneaking over to the food table, slowly picking up and hiding a cookie in the back pocket of her black jeans. As she wipes her hands on her shirt where a few cookie crumbs stick in the fabric, her eyes meet mine. She smiles, and then she's gone.