Flowers for the Living

Mary Coulter, who works by the day and has little time for reading, had neverheard of Mary Webb's poem about the woman who had craved flowers all her lifeand never had had them, and yet when she died her coffin was lined with pinkrosebuds, and stately white lilies stood like guardian angels among the tapers; andblue forget-me-nots, and lilies of the valley mingled with carnations and canterburybells and narcissus and iris to form wreaths and pillows and shields and crossesand broken...
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Mary Coulter, who works by the day and has little time for reading, had neverheard of Mary Webb's poem about the woman who had craved flowers all her lifeand never had had them, and yet when she died her coffin was lined with pinkrosebuds, and stately white lilies stood like guardian angels among the tapers; andblue forget-me-nots, and lilies of the valley mingled with carnations and canterburybells and narcissus and iris to form wreaths and pillows and shields and crossesand broken columns and what-nots, covering her coffin three times over, andoverflowing the altar and chancel of the church .... while she lay, still and cold anddead, among all this belated loveliness, with a Mona Lisa smile on her face, notknowing a word about it, and certainly not caring!But though Mary Coulter had not heard of the poem, she did not need any one toshow her the tragedy of the flowers that came too late as she sat that chillNovember morning at her friend's funeral and looked at the roses and carnationsand smilax and fern that made beautiful the cheap coffin wherein rested the mortalremains of Martha Minnis, whose tired hands had come to rest at last on the whitesilk front of her best black dress.