florida picture post

when nick passed away, we tried to visit a church in new smyrna beach... it was a holiday weekend and the doors to the church were locked, so we went over to where this little altar was, on the church grounds, and my dad said a prayer there... it was built years ago by some church members in memory of their son... it seemed a fitting place...


churches in general freak me out, but this outdoor setting was really nice... it's a serene place...


This year we made it inside the church. This giant stained glass window faces the ocean and the rising sun... my dad said a prayer inside the church this time, but we still went and paid a visit to the altar outside...


I was there when we picked out nick's urn (we purposely picked something that didn't look like an urn... in fact, i even suggested a stainless steel martini shaker because i thought my brother would have appreciated it... in any case, some time after i'd returned to michigan my mom went back and bought the matching candle holder and frame, so now nick's ashes reside in a special place of honor in the house...


anyone who reads this blog with even the least bit of regularity knows that i wanted a place i could visit to honor my brother... well, before i flew down to florida, my mom had told me that she'd had a garden stone made... what she didn't tell me was that she'd spent months planting an entire garden...


The pictures don't come close to doing it justice. It's stunning in person... It's far more than I could have ever even imagined.


My mom painstakingly replanted things that nick had been growing (he had grafted trees, etc) into this area and some friend sof my moms bought an orange tree which sits right in the middle and once it's larger will provide a bit of shade.