Flowers help me remember my grandfather, and all who served

first person

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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 flower