When I Die Plant Some Damn Flowers.
Source
delicate flowers on long thin stems warming in the sunshine
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
When I die…
Don’t dress in somber black
and sit silently in muted mourning.
Dress in all the bright and lovely colors
that shout out the celebration of our lives.
The girls can dress in rainbows and florals
or flowy bohemian splashes and swirls.
Hippie freedom-feeling choices
I only embraced after I no longer cared
about trapping my body and my mind
under slimming, dark folds of fabric.
You can wear the Hawaiian shirt we bought while on Oahu
and retell the story of one of our most treasured days.
How we spent our sun-kissed hours
meandering the shoreline near Ka’ena Point
investigating one rocky, coral-tumbling hole after another.
Eagerly searching for shells and competing with each other
to find the rarest, most intricate prize.
Don’t sing hymns or repeat the same old Bible verses
I had my fill of those while living.
Read a poem of the wildflowers in the fields
or the crimson and gold colors of the leaves
falling gently on autumn breezes.
Melodic words spoken about the tunes of the songbirds
with their lilting whistles and beckoning calls.
How they sing exuberant praises
that eclipse the size of their tiny,
delicate, fine-feathered bones.
Exalting the birth of the first rays of sun,
while they twitter and hop along dew-dipped branches.
Or the genuine unfiltered laughter of little children
running barefoot on the grass
scrubbed fresh in the innocence of days with no obligation.
How love can conquer all the dark spaces and dreary hardships
because love lives in the little joys and simple, spontaneous…