First flower, last flower, Sally

First flower, last flower.
Sally.
Photography.


:::

about this piece.
"After Hope died, as is often the way with a tragedy, bunches and bunches of flowers started arriving on our doorstep. We asked for no flowers at the funeral, yet more people brought more flowers. By about the second week after her death, we had about 30 bunches of flowers in our home and pretty much no space left to store them. They were on top of the book shelf, tv and fridge - everywhere.

"The very first bunch to arrive was a simple bunch of Singapore orchids, just like I carried on my wedding day. They were sent by close friends and were here waiting for us when we arrived home from hospital the day after she was born - empty handed and totally bereft.

"As the weeks went by, the flowers all died, obviously. Mum, who was here every day in those first weeks, would remove the dead flowers from the bunches and salvage the living ones and re-form them in to new bunches. But the Singapore orchids just kept lasting and lasting and lasting.

"Day by day, another one of them would drop off, and the last one to finally fall was on December 7, 2008 - almost four months since Hope was born. Here is the picture I took of it on that day. The first flowers to arrive, and the last to go."

about the contributor.
Sally is a mother to her lost daughter Hope, stillborn at 40 weeks and 5 days in August 2008 and her brand new son Angus, born alive and screaming in November 2009. She maintains the blog Tuesday's Hope.