The Flower Ministry
Empathy and respect for the dead as a way of life.
I was a morbid little child. One of those nineties girlies with braided pig tails and a face fixed in a way that gave adults permission to tell me from a young age to smile. I saw a tiktok a few weeks ago about how babies and toddlers go through the bliss of having very little awareness and then, boom! One day you’re like, four and conciousness sets in. You question the world and everything in it, you get very philosophically sophisticated for a toddler. Words make sense now? Who am I? What is *this*? This happened to me during a party. It solidified itself as one of my first memories. I am not sure if it was even my birthday, I just remember being in front of my family and asked to smile. I remember not understanding what that meant, what was being asked of me and felt panic. My aunts modeling the motion of a smile, thinking “kinda get it, okay,” and I think I did mimic what they were doing back for the picture. As with many of us, our memories are ours and I ask my mom a couple times before if she remembers that day, she doesn’t. I have seen pics of the party itself before so I know I am not imagining it altogether… All that to say that resting bitch face is my signature look and it matches my personality quite well, wether one is the cause of the other, it’s a chicken and egg situation.
I wanted to be a scientist, an archeologist to be exact, so badly I consistently buried chicken dinner bones and I cringe to admit even a hamster that died on us was buried in a plot where I could later uncover the bones. I took the duty of dia de los muertos very seriously and looked forward to the labor of washing and re-painting the graves and bringing arrangements to our ancestors. Moving to small town USA where historic cemeteries were a walk from my high school, I would often cut off school to smoke weed and nap in the cemeteries. I would bring pastels or charcoal and paper and do grave stone rubbings, gently cutting the overgrown grass and picking up trash as a labor of respect for those that call that space home and nature itself.
In my twenties, I supported myself and my little kid by working as a hospice aid, as a born again Christian at that time, I felt God-called to help folks work through their last days, saw many people ‘give their lives to Christ’ and honestly, I am still processing that to reconcile so many ideologies. All I know is that I was a gentle comfort to those passing and a strong support to the families left behind to grieve. I worked with folks that died within two hours of the assignment and spent years with some patients, getting to know their stories, their families, we became friends. Nowadays the term Death Duola would’ve better describe the care and comfort services I provided people and I have been connected to some folks to teach me a deeper practice.
For almost ten years now as my career path pivoted from health care to art, I worked on Modern Memento Mori, which is an ongoing project that has included photography, art, storytelling through a medium publication dedicated to publishing writings about death and grief, not just mine but other people’s as well, accompanied with a social media presence that shares resources and information. During my Art Mart era, we hosted small death cafe-style chats accompanied with crafting events (make your own rosary evenings) and workshops with experts and a Dia de los Avivados group show. This project has helped me grieve, understand and connect with others. Some of the photos taken for the Modern Memento Mori series were taken during a specially sweet Memorial Day at the Union Cemetery in Fredericksburg Virginia and later selected for an exhibition called 40 Under 40 in Virginia at the Shenandoah Valley Arts Center about ten years ago.
When Noah died we were not only broken but broke. It was community support that bought my nephew a gravestone. Flowers were sent to us from friends and family all over. Nothing can comfort a grief so big, and sometimes I get a whiff of a certain flower and taken back to a sunlit room, where my niece dressed in a white dress and my oldest kid played, under a giant white funerary wreath. From a small window, sunbeams pour into the room so painfully, beautifully, it was almost a spotlight on the kids, glittering with dust particles, the light gently touching a corner of the wreath’s white flowers created a radiating white light. It is painful to describe the feelings surronding that simple act of feeling a fleeting sense of awe when this innocent ray of afternoon sunshine shone against such horrific loss could cast.
Later, a leader of different movements and grassroots organizations, I consistently advocated for the org to pick up the tab on flower arrangements when tragedies happened in our communities. Within those spaces I have had the privilege of leading art builds, design actions, street theater plays, workshops, mural and even a book project that deals with systemic, state sanctioned deaths and violence with art for popular education or campaign-impact purposes.
Last year I learned about the term “projects of survival” while doing my Minister’s training with Kairos Center for Religious Studies at Union Theological Seminary of NYC finally learning a term for things I helped create like the Food is Free fxbg project, Art Mart, RITA, SANTOS, Apoteca. I learned the term as I was going through a transitional period of my life. Almost a death unto myself, shedding years of trauma based fears, programmed ignorances, and deconstructing what I want in my life vs what was expected and simply what I adopted as my own desires becausr I was too afraid to try again, to dream again, to hope for a future and name my wildest aspirations, I had to take hard looks at my own self and the way I created my own and other people’s sufferings. It’s scary and liberating, and I see why some people choose to stay in the squalor of their bad choices, it is much warmer inside that coffin than it is to claw out through cold dirt. Making different choices for oneself and staying true to who you are as well as who you want to be is a balancing act, and we won’t get it right every time. So I been minding my business, therapy, support groups, lots of work and enterpreneurship as well straight up school work. I decided that the best way to not burn out again was to retire into creating financial stability and focus on personal growth and development especially healing through focusing on joy and letting nature heal me.
I have been blessed to meet organizations that do just that like Defensores de la Cuenca getting me out into nature and enviromentalism. As a Lead Ambassador Program participant for Young, Gifted and Green, this past January I spent an incredible weekend in Memphis, we had to leave early due to a big winter storm but still had time to pay respects to Doctor King’s death site, hear beautiful music, fellowship with my Tribe and in one of our sessions, we made vision boards. While talking about things in our hearts and where we feel called to ministry, I began telling my cohorts and leaders about myself, my work around death, the way that systemic violence and policy failure is killing us. How deeply tied I feel to Mother Jones’ words “Pray for the Dead. Fight like Hell for the Living.”
I wished that at the very least, there was a way to offer comfort. I named the ways I have done that in the past and how I would like to continue. I know that my body and mind cannot take another four years of Trump, another pandemic, more ecological devastation and natural disasters, gun violence taking our children, of confronting the system AND confroting this grief as I have done in the past. I shared my knowing that if there’s one thing I know I can always do is to provide a little comfort or sign of respect during a hard time. The movement needs a Flower or Altar ministry, you know like at churches, where nice ladies take apart the altar flowers and put them together in bunches to take them to the members of church that need comfort? The world needs that.
A few days ago a young soldier self immolated in front of the Israeli embassy. And today I am not here to speak on colonialism, genocide, war and peace and the more complex issues. my body of work, person and money speak for where I stand.
The only thing I could think of as I tried in vain to avoid seeing the actual act, his dying words on social media (my mental health really cannot handle seeing suffering/pain like that and I just feel some sort of way every time we share this type of content without considering living family) is that this is someone’s loved one dying on screen, he was a member of our beloved community that understood that radical acts are sometimes necessary for other people to take one’s revolution and he did what he thought would make the most impact. In NO way should this suggest that I am encouraging you to do this too.
I do believe that we all have a place and call in this work of World Peace.
However, I don’t believe I have any answers as to How peace, reparations and understanding can be achieved, not just in Palestine but in every place that has been tainted by colonization and imperialism, which is why I am blessed to be in the space of learning from experts, watching and giving space to the people directly impacted by war and extreme violence to teach me how to best support them, and most of all, I am trying to learn the skill of shutting the fuck up, because my mouth and hands have caused more harm than good and the scales need to be balanced before I myself can be balanced enough to speak on Peace. I am just getting acquainted with inner Peace and still fall short when it comes down to keeping the peace with the violent and oppressive. This is a life long skill to hone. No, I do not have the answers, but I have deep empathy for those suffering under the crushing weight of the systems. I can still offer a small comfort.
So I went back to doing what I’ve done best all my life. I put a post on Facebook, asking friends to collect a few bucks with me so that I can make a funeral wreath for Aaron and drop off in the site where he willingly took his life to bring his message of peace and freedom to us. Leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign, Veterans for Peace, an incredible writer living in Europe and a Palestinian Poet donated flower money and I the skills to create this for the young martyr for Peace.
Thus, out of death, The Flower Ministry was born.
Here’s the flowers we used and what they mean in the language of flowers:
Scabiosa (White)- unfortunate love
Carnation (White)- deep love
Eryngium Blue Bell- protection
Astrantia (White)- strength
Eucalyptus Nagi- protection
Daisy (purple) - pure love and strength
