These vases of flowers were arranged by our friend and her Lady-Links during a recent visit. Although this activity seems rather simple, the process involved for our friend is quite complex and provided opportunities for her to sort, categorize, separate, group, and manipulate. With lots of love and laughter, we Lady-Links participated in the process with her so that she would have a model to follow. We did it so naturally that it was not as if we were “teaching” her anything. We simply talked about what we were doing and she quickly engaged.
The first step was to include the flowers in the tote tray we carry to each Lady-Link visit. Our friend loves beautiful things and her apartment is filled with lovely decorative items from years past. We began talking about how beautiful the flowers in the tote tray were and that there was an event in our community that needed some flower arrangements for their table decorations. We said, “Let”s make some arrangements and share them with our community.” Our friend became interested immediately. Notice, we didn’t ask her if she wanted to make some flower arrangements. We simply agreed as a group that this would be a great thing to do and that we would have fun doing it.
Next, we put out four vases on the table. There were four of us including our friend. Then we separated the flowers by colors. We gave an equal number of purple flowers to each person.
As a group, we talked about what a beautiful shade of purple the flowers were. We laughed as we pretended to smell them (they are silk flowers) and joked about why they didn’t have a fragrance. Our friend laughed with us and smelled the flowers and would say, “Noooooo.” We could see our friend’s patio with lovely baskets of hanging flowers and made several comparisons to those flowers and the ones we were arranging. Our friend was fully engaged, looking from the patio flowers to the silk flowers in front of us. She even pointed out other flowers in decorations in her home that we could see from where we were sitting.
The last part of the activity was to insert the white flowers into the vase with the purple flowers. Look closely at this picture. Our friend put her white flowers into her coffee cup. I did not realize this when I was taking the picture and neither did the other Lady-Links. When I finished taking the picture, and saw it in the cup that was full of coffee, I just smiled and said, “Let’s move it to the vase so it will have more room there.” It made me realize that next time I should move the coffee cups before we begin our flower arranging.
This was such a successful experience because we laughed, talked, had fun, complimented one another on our artistic skills, and felt good that we could do something that would benefit our community. It is not at all important that she used a coffee cup instead of a vase. A few days later when we attended the event where our flowers decorated the tables, we told our friend what a great job she did in making them. She smiled and said how pretty they were, but I don’t think she remembers making them. That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we ladies had our “girl time” together doing something we all enjoyed that promoted lots of love and laughter, enriching our friend’s life and ours too!
This is so dear to my heart, I absolutely love what you are doing. What a gift of love!
Thank you, Gay, for your encouraging comments. We do love what we’re doing. Our visits to our friend are scheduled twice a week and we have as much fun as she does! It’s wonderful to see her communication and social skills improving. With just a little thought, time, and planning, the visits help her make links to activities in her past which contribute to her quality of life. A joy to see the process working!