For the longest time, I felt it was vital to have a favorite EVERYTHING: Favorite color, favorite food, favorite author, favorite flower- stop. It stops at “favorite flower”. It bothered me at first, because I liked all flowers, but eventually, I became annoyed at the minuscule fact that I simply couldn’t make up my mind on which I liked best. Tonight, I was told something that decided my favorite flower, though. Tonight made it clear on a much deeper level.

10 years ago, my mother sent an orchid to my grandparents for their anniversary, and it bloomed more beautifully than any flower they’d ever seen. As they moved around the country, they brought the orchid with them, and it never failed to bloom when the time came. That stopped on March 2, 2010. The day my grandfather took my grandma to the hospital, he noticed the stalks were wilting. He noticed that the plant no longer looked healthy. My grandmother died in the hospital that night, and upon returning home, Grandpa noticed that the flower buds had hit the ground. However, he refused to pull the wiry stems out of the soil. For months, the orchid never bloomed, but this dry spell ended on October 3, 2010. After returning to his home in Florida from helping my mom recover from cancer, my grandpa was in shock at what he saw. The orchid had blossomed into one large flower, and several smaller buds. I’m sure that my grandma is in Heaven, but maybe God made her heaven to be an orchid. Maybe my grandmother’s spirit is within the vines of that persistent flower.

I thought that choosing my favorite flower was based on the smell, or the look, but I was wrong; it’s about finding a connection with something- anything. It doesn’t have to be a flower; it could be a material, or a spiritual intuition in which you see God, or a loved one. For me, orchids stand tall because they’re the rope that connects my grandmother to earth. Orchids mean my grandpa is smiling, and my mother is well. Orchids mean God is watching over me. Orchids mean it’s going to be all right.