For the Love of Flowers, Stand Up to Cancer!

1997. The year of Princess Diana's untimely death. I remember watching her funeral on TV with my mom and my sisters. She was only 36 years old and my mother quietly said, "She is too young to die." Hot tears stung my eyes and I tried my best to hide it from everyone.

You see, they both have the same age and my mother was battling cancer.

My mother gently passed away at the end of that same year, she fought breast cancer for 2 years. As she was leaving this world she had a quiet smile on her face. Perhaps a smile that knew that everything will be alright, a smile that showed she was ready for whatever is beyond, a smile that acknowledged our Maker.

I see her when I admire the profusion of flowers in the lovely planters of Stanford Mall. She had spent many afternoons there because of her chemotherapy.

I see her when the daffodils greet us in the early spring. Her doctors would give her that bright and cheery flower after every chemo session.

I feel her when the Amazon Lilies would bloom and fill the air with their heady scent, we had a potted plant that would bloom close to her birthday and she had said that it was always a special gift.

I remember her exclaiming how lovely orchids were, how it used to grow abundantly in her childhood home and had some of it used for her wedding with dad.

Amazing, the power of flowers... a friend told me today, when you work with flowers... it is a work filled with LOVE. Flowers are for wooing, celebrating, apologizing and also grieving. All of this is because of LOVE. There is a heart and soul with what I do. I love it and am very lucky to be able to do all this with passion.