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White chrysanthemums and stargazer lilies follow Matilda Osborne everywhere.
Perhaps her presence just encourages them to bloom; it’s unimportant really, but the fact of the matter remains that wherever she goes, they seem to grow. She sees the chrysanthemums blooming in the yards of her neighbours, their white colour stands out bright against the green; and she sees the lilies sat before those two cement slabs, playing their part in this scene beautifully.
Her world is littered with white petals that sway gently with the wind, helpless against it’s strength. She goes through life haunted by colourless flowers that would chase her from Cambridge to Auckland, and every March that awful bouquet sits on her windowsill. It stays there, untouched, until every single one of those God forsaken ivory petals flutters softly down to her bedroom floor. She stares at the dying arrangement and watches the final petal this year float to the ground, and Matilda decides she hates white flowers.
She stops seeing white chrysanthemums and stargazer lilies after that. She doesn’t know why but she doesn’t care to find out. They’re gone and she’s thankful, the Lord had heard her prayers and granted her peace for her devotion. God is good! She carries on with her existence (life isn’t the right word considering her predicament) and forgets all about the flowers.
A month passes before the point of no return introduces itself.
A single white hyacinth sits in the centre of her family living room.
It stares deep into her soul. Flowers can speak to you if you know how to listen, but unfortunately for our naïve Matilda, she doesn’t know how to do that. She ignores it.
It starts as a small yet sharp pain in her stomach. A constant, dull stabbing in her lower stomach that no doctors can explain. Then it grows. The pain gets worse and worse and it moves further and further up. It feels like someone is trying push themselves through her ribs, like something is constricting around her organs and bones, and Matilda can’t stand it. It’s unbearable, but nobody on earth knows what’s wrong with her. Every doctor under the sun has tried to treat this girl but nothing is wrong. She doesn’t even get a diagnosis when her skin begins to raise in strangely shaped patches on her stomach, legs and arms. It makes sense though, angels don’t get sick.
It’s not until her untimely death that the problem was discovered.
Her autopsy left medical professionals speechless. What they found was not some rare disease, but rather a gardens worth of white chrysanthemums and lilies. They were planted just above her pubic bone and grew over and around her insides, their stems interlaced and woven through her ribcage and white blooms were found growing throughout her entire body, until they reached her heart. Snowy coloured flowers covered the organ from top to bottom, and their stems constricted around it tightly. Her death was classed as organ failure.
Her body was not stitched up after the discovery was made and Matilda’s body is left a once living flower pot. The plant’s continue to grow from inside her until they overtake both her and the earth. You’d probably find some deeper meaning behind her passing if you searched for it, but flowers speak an awfully quiet language; don’t you think?