It’s Still Good. Don’t Throw It Away

 

They were going to throw them away.

Not all of them were bad. Some were, yeah. Moldy, wilted, done. But a lot of them just had a little bit wrong with them. A little browning. A little damage. Nothing major.

But to them, it was all the same.

Trash.

And I couldn’t just let that happen.

So I took them home.

And it turned into a whole situation.

The kitchen, the living room—covered in petals, leaves, stems, clippings. It was everywhere. It took me a while to get everything organized, pulling out the bad ones, cutting, cleaning, trying to save whatever I could.

And while I was doing all that, I was talking to the flowers.

I was telling them, “I’m gonna save you. You’re gonna get to fulfill your job. You’re gonna make somebody happy.”

The ones that didn’t make it, I felt bad about.

But the ones that still had something left in them, I told them, “Don’t worry. I’m gonna make you good. I can see there’s still good on you.”

Some of them were packed so tight together, all bunched up.

I remember saying, “You need to breathe.”

So I separated them, gave them space, let them open up a little.

I even put them in the shower, let some water run over them, just to wake them up.

Then I brought them back, put them in buckets, and just looked at them.

Some of them were beautiful. Like nothing was even wrong.

And in that moment, I noticed something.

With all the darkness that’s been going on with me… the depression, the anxiety I had been feeling for a while…

God put me in this position.

Right there in the middle of it, I had flowers all around me. Petals all over my living room and kitchen floor. All over the house.

And it felt different.

Almost magical in a way.

Like a blessing.

Not something you get to experience all the time… if at all.

I ended up dumping all the bad stuff, cleaned everything up, and got the rest ready.

There were even a couple of flowers that stood out.

Exotic ones.

The kind you don’t just give to anyone.

The kind that would have been just right for someone special that I have in mind.

But I’m not able to do that right now.

They would have been perfect for her.

This all goes back to something I wrote recently.

Flowers for the Living, Flowers for the Dead: The Renewal of Me.

That’s where this started.

That’s how salvaging these flowers came about in the last entry.

And now it’s turned into this… going into nursing homes, handing them out, seeing what it does.

If you want to read that one, it happened on Saturday.

And now, it looks like this might keep happening.

For some reason, I’m doing it.

For some reason, God has me doing it.

And if it’s just for a moment in time, then so be it.

I’m just being used as a vessel right now to do this.

So I stopped by Dollar Tree and grabbed some zip ties. That was the quickest thing I could think of to put bouquets together.

When I got to the nursing home, I sat in the lobby and started making bouquets. One by one.

I made about twenty, maybe twenty-five.

While I was doing that, an older woman came up to me and asked what I was doing.

She asked if it was for tomorrow.

I told her, “No, this is for the residents. I’m just handing them out tonight.”

She said her daughter lived there.

So I told her, “I have some flowers just for her.”

I had these roses in mind. Orange and red mixed together.

I handed them to her and said, “For some reason, I think you should have these.”

She said she was going to the car and would come back.

When she came back, I gave them to her, and I told her she could pick anything else she wanted.

Out of everything there, she picked the only bouquet I had that was mixed. The only unique one.

I told her, “I made that one to be special.”

She pointed at one of the flowers in it and said, “This is my daughter’s favorite.”

I said, “Then it was meant for her.”

And I told her, “Those roses… I guess they were meant for you.”

She said, “You might be right.”

She told me her name was Juanita, and I said that was my mom’s name.

She said, “Maybe that’s why we were supposed to meet. Maybe we were being called to each other.”

Then a nurse walked by and jokingly asked if the flowers were for her.

When she came back around, I gave her the only tulips I had.

She said she had a really bad day.

And just like that, it changed it.

After that, I went to the nurse station and received direction as to where to hand them out.

That’s when I met Margarita Rios.

It was her first day there. She had just gotten there for rehab. She hurt herself.

We started talking.

And somehow, through all the names and connections, we started talking about family.

She mentioned she was from Taft.

Then she said the Galindos.

That’s what did it.

That’s how I knew I knew her family.

And from there, we started talking about them—the people in her family that I knew, all the connections.

And then we started talking about her niece—my first real serious girlfriend—how we met, how things were back then, and how things ended.

And I was able to talk about it clearly.

I was young.

I had gone through things I didn’t understand at the time. My brother. The fire. Everything that came with it.

And I could see it now without running from it or trying to rewrite it.

She told me it made her day.

Her first day there.

She asked me to come back and visit her.

I told her I would.

So I guess I’m making friends in nursing homes now.

And that moment with her, it didn’t feel random.

Not in some mystical way.

Just in a real way.

Like looking back at my own timeline.

Seeing who I was then… and who I am now.

Back then, I didn’t know how to handle what I was carrying.

Now, I’m still carrying things, but I’m doing something different with it.

I’m not reacting the same way.

I’m not moving the same way.

I’m trying to turn it into something good.

It was brought to my attention that I had taken something that was literally being thrown away and turned it into something that made people feel seen and happy.

And that sounded right.

That’s just what I do.

I see the good in things most people would overlook.

Because not everything that’s damaged is meant to be thrown away—or held onto too tightly.

Some things… just need a little time, a little care, a little space to breathe.

And they still have something left in them.

Life.
Beauty.