Daisies

The daisies are in full bloom.  I was not originally a Daisy person, but they are perennials, and low maintenance, so added a few to the front landscaping at our prior house.  Little did I know that they were my mothers "favorite" flower.  Her birthday is this time of the year (she would have been 103 next week), and she told me that she thought that the daisies bloomed just for her birthday.  Being raised in a poor mining community, I suppose that you looked for beauty wherever you could find it.  Or maybe it was that her sisters had March birthdays, when there were no flowers abloom!  

As her dementia progressed, she found it frustrating that the names of flowers long familiar had left her--petunias, geraniums, etc.  But the daisy was always "there".   I planted large stands of daises outside her window for her to enjoy.  When we could no longer care for her, and she moved to "the home", I marked her door with a wreath of daisies--so she could always find it. 

Now, when the daisies bloom, I think of her.   They are still outside her window, although she is long gone.  Enjoyed now by her great grandson, who thinks they are interesting.  They bloom around my yard, immune to deer nibbling, and a reminder of the time we spend gardening (I gardened, mom sat in a chair and watched).  They remind me of the birthdays of my two DIL, both sharing June as a birthday month with my mother, and each in her own way a characteristic or two (could that have influenced why they were selected?). 

This year, her 103 year of daisies, they remind me that although she has been gone for years, she is still with me.  In the sewing she taught me; the recipes that we occasionally pull out for special occasions; in the eyes of 4, who looks most like her and has her love of new recipes; in the people we are because she enriched our lives; in the memories we share of her "quirks"; and in ways our lives were better because she was here.

The daisies are blooming....a sweet reminder of a great mother and grandmother.  And although she never got to meet them, she would have loved having great grandsons!