Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
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Flowers bookend our lives at birth and death, symbolizing love and grief but also joy during all the celebrations in between. They conjure peace, stir memories, tell a story and can unite.
My reverence for flowers began when reading my grandfather’s, Trooper John McGuire’s, early letters home to Canada while serving overseas during the Second World War. He mailed rose petals to his mother, awed by the rose gardens thriving in England, and in another, he describes the abundance of tulips and crocuses. He asks his wife whether she received the flowers he arranged for her birthday and shares the jubilation he felt when residents tossed flowers at their Sherman tank after his crew helped to liberate a French town. He writes to his sister, “Did you receive the primrose I sent?”
My grandfather’s flower musings stopped after my grandmother in Englehart, Ont., received the devastating telegram, yet it is a letter she received soon after from Chaplain Dyke that initiated my regard for flowers and their gift in uniting humanity. The Chaplain writes that Dutch farmers took a substantial risk in burying my grandfather and his comrades upon their death on Oct. 5, 1944. Once the Nazis were finally driven back, the farmers returned and placed flowers on the graves. I picture my grandmother rereading the Chaplain’s letter – like I have – processing the complete selflessness. I have often wondered whether my grandmother’s fondness for tulips and dedication to her flower gardens hugging the front of her tiny wartime house was her reciprocal gratitude for the Chaplain’s thoughtful letter and the farmers’ determination in providing dignity and respect to her husband and his comrades.
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Decades later and after detailed research, the Chaplain’s letter provided me with the opportunity to speak to the next generation of the Dutch farmers who buried my grandfather. The language barrier hindered communication but there was no mistaking the magnitude of the moment – our mutual respect for the courage of soldiers fighting far from home and civilians trapped and starved, honouring their liberators with all they had: flowers. We didn’t have the words for our respective gratitude; a quietness ensued, breath the only sound in our reverence for this inconceivable connection 60 years later.
Flowers and their symbolic link to my grandfather have led to other moments of unexpected connection. A few years ago, a cousin asked me to deliver one of her paintings to my mother (my grandfather’s eldest child). It was an interpretation of the sun rising over a field of poppies leaning in a mild breeze.
As my mother unwrapped the painting, I saw and felt the impact art has in capturing the rough edges of a life. The surge of emotion that swept across her face and the pain registering in her eyes seemed to stop time as she absorbed the significance of this artwork. My mother’s expression symbolized the love lost between a father and a daughter and a young family that would limp through the loss. A fragile but fierce pride floated softly across her face too. A flower can do this and bearing witness was a privilege I won’t forget.
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Somehow flowers continue to weave in and out of my grandfather’s legacy. A few months ago, I received a surprise note from a stranger, a gentleman, who lives in Bergen op Zoom, the city in the Netherlands where my grandfather is buried. He had read mine and my mother’s messages written in the war cemetery’s guest book back in 2003. Geert Polak found me on social media and a few days later I received another note saying, “I hope for world peace” and included a picture of a bouquet of flowers and a tiny Canadian flag placed in front of my grandfather’s grave. Seeing his tombstone again after 22 years, adorned with flowers and the humanity behind them made me so grateful for this stranger’s altruism and his recognition of my grandfather’s service.
My grandfather and the flower providence that has linked our family’s ongoing remembrance of him leads me to one of his letters home where he describes the journey by ship across the Atlantic and finally spots land (England) in November 1942: “I don’t think I ever saw so pretty a sight in my life – it was more like a painting than anything else – leaves on the trees… and flowers in bloom.”
I have learned through my grandfather’s letters to appreciate the hard-won cost of our freedom including his ultimate sacrifice, but also my grandmother’s strength as a single mother struggling through a tragic loss. I have sensed my mother’s, aunts’ and uncles’ silent reverie, even now into their late 80s and 90s, for their father, a longing never granted nor diminished.
Families who have experienced the impact of war will always search for ways to remember. Flowers for our family provides a multi-generational connection to my grandfather’s legacy while also instilling compassion for families in wartorn countries suffering horrific losses. May flowers find them one day too – rising from the ashes to symbolize love, loss and grief while also uniting humanity.
Cassie Connolly lives in Toronto.