Bloom Against Gray!

It feels good to be part of the Around The World Challenge again. Interestingly, this is round #50 and the focus is on spring photos.

While we don't have spring in this part of the world, Nigeria precisely, but we often experience abundance of rain which usually start March. Right now, we're in the early rainy season, and with it, blooms and green return. Even as I'm drafting this post, it's raining, and that's for the third time this week.

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Earlier this month, I attended a colleague’s aunt’s funeral. Before the burial, we went to Allied Medical Services along Aba/Enugu Expressway, to convey her remains to her husband’s hometown for interment.

Blooming along the outer wall, just before the gate of the funeral home, is this ornamental shrub - "Bougainvillea flower", its pink flowering vine covering the sides of the wall at the entrance.

My participation photo.

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It wasn’t just a small patch. The shrub had grown so thick and wide that it draped the entire wall, almost like a living fence. Underneath, its branches and leaves formed a natural canopy. People who came to see their late loved ones sat under it, shielded from the sun.

Funeral homes aren’t actually places we expect to see beauty. They’re quiet, somber. Yet this vine refused to follow that rule - it gave life, without denying grief. In fact, this shrub did two things at once. It beautified a place meant for farewells, adding color without being loud. And it served people — giving shade, giving a softer space to wait, to breathe, to remember...

You know, some things don’t need an occasion to show up. They just do.

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