In the living room my mother has placed her latest flower arrangement: two peach-coloured roses, a riot of Gyspophilia and four violently violet Gerberas crammed indifferently into a clear crystal vase, a present from a Sri Lankan student's grateful mother. It is a terribly depressing stight - like seeing flowers from a petrol station forecourt sticking dejectedly out of the vase on a grave. In the cemetart round the corner from where I sit, the tightly packed graves all boast a pathetic bouquet, usually quite far into the beautifully hideous natural process of decay. The flowers wilt and become exactly what they are meant to - a crumpled brown remembrance of the mutability and mortality of everything. I always think that the dead flowers are what make cemetaries so awful. Not the stench of death, the tender epitaphs or the long forgotten grandparents/aunts/brothers/friends. For me, its always the flowers. Until a few minutes ago my room boasted an explosion of orange and yellow Chrysanthemums in a glass vase, positioned next to my mirror in order to reflect the colour further around the room. Sat here and bored I scrutinized the stalks and noticed that they were furry and grey. The flowers were still nauseatingly vibrant but the stalks were greyish-brown and limp when I touched them. The flowers on my Grandmother's grave had done the same thing when I last changed them - at the slightest touch they disintegrated into goo in my fingers.

Why do we put flowers on graves? To remind of the fragility of life? To soften death? Because we don't know what else to do?

I suspect it is the last.