I’ve kept a dead, dusty bouquet of proteas through three homes and nearly a decade of life. I should have thrown them out years ago, but every time I try, something stops me.
It makes no sense. I’m the person who replaced an oven and a four-slot toaster with an air fryer because it saved three minutes and twelve inches of counter space. I declutter for fun.
However, every time my eyes scan the bedroom for the rush of something I can get rid of, I land on the bouquet: brittle, brown, curling in on itself. My hand twitches. Just for a second.
I think, “Today’s the day I throw them out.”
And then I don’t.
My grandmother gave me these flowers
My husband and I moved into our first place together in 2016. A small, one-bedroom, ground-floor apartment with zero charm that we loved because it was ours. After eight years of long-distance, state-hopping, and cross-border logistics, we were finally building a life under the same roof.
To mark the milestone, my grandmother, Ganna, gave us a bouquet of proteas, South Africa’s national flower. The spiky, dusty pink petals flared like a crown around the center, a fuzzy white heart, holding everything together. They looked both ancient and new, fierce and delicate at once.
That same year, I sat by Ganna’s side as she took her last rattling breath.
Over time, the proteas changed. The vibrant pinks dulled. The soft petals stiffened and curled inward, like they were folding in on old secrets. Their color faded to beige, then deepened into the kind of papery brown that catches dust and doesn’t let go.
Still, I packed them up for the next move. And the one after that. With a car packed full of our possessions, I sat with the flowers on my lap for the entire drive so they wouldn’t snap.
They broke a little anyway.
My husband asked, “Why not let them go?”
I didn’t have a good answer, so I just shook my head.
Ganna and I were very different
Ganna was nothing like me. Her kitchen cupboards overflowed with old margarine containers and glass mustard jars, carefully washed and stacked.
Ganna didn’t care about efficiency; hers was a life of abundance. She crammed so many ice cream scoops into my milkshakes that I had to eat them with a spoon.
She never believed me when I said I wasn’t hungry. She’d make me a sandwich, and offer a biscuit, and quietly start boiling the kettle for tea, just in case I changed my mind. She’d pack those margarine containers full of leftovers, “because you might get peckish later.”
One kiss was never enough. She’d pull me in for three, four, five — then hold my face in her hands like she was trying to memorize it.
The last years of her life were dominated by constant, agonising pain. Yet even in the hospital, she worried about her visitors — whether they were hungry, thirsty, comfortable, or tired. And even though she was dying herself, one of her last requests was for roses to be placed in the room of a friend of hers who passed away a few days earlier.
That was Ganna — always more, always love, to the very end.
The flowers have taught me something about love
I nearly threw out the proteas earlier this year during a particularly ruthless clean-out. I picked them up, dusted off the brittle stems, and for a second I thought, “This is silly. They’re just dead flowers. Let them go.”
And then I stopped.
I remembered how she’d kiss me too many times. How she’d pack leftovers I didn’t ask for. How, in a world that measures worth by profit and utility, she thought that everyone deserved a molasses-thick milkshake.
Those brittle flowers break every rule I live by.
But, like Ganna, they taught me that love doesn’t care about logic.
