Flowers for Algernon

 

My grandmother sent me a box filled with items she is giving to each family member because she does not want her things to be "taken" as she puts it. Sadly, she is very angry with someone who married into the family and feels like this person wishes her ill and wants to take her stuff.

As a person observing outside, this animosity has been dished from both sides. So this is how I ended up with these dusty flowers that arrived in my mailbox.

I sneezed as soon as the parcel was opened. Then I laughed. Then I cried. For the realization came that my grandmother soon will cease to exist and these dusty flowers that made me sneeze were now a part of that fading part of me.

The little white lab mouse named Algernon (from the story Flowers for Algernon) in is initially just an average mouse, but he undergoes an experimental operation that makes him three times as intelligent as a regular mouse. My grandmother like the white lab mouse lives alone within her four walls, never being able to go out into the world as she pleases. Alone day in and day out. She relocated to Texas so all I can do is speak to her via telephone and via postal mail. It breaks my heart of her isolated existence. She like Algernon is brilliant. She has been a poet. She invented things that required patents. She has worked in factories. Was almost famous and on TV. She had to seek asylum in an embassy for counter revolutionary work. She has been a sinner and a saint. She has been a genius and mad. And she loves flowers both real and pretend.

So I took a photograph to remember her Flowers for Algernon for one day these flowers will be no more.