What Flowers Remember - Heartfelt Floral Gifts for Anniversaries, Memorials & Special Occasions | Perfect for Sympathy, Weddings & Romantic Gestures" （如果原始标题是中文："什么花记得" 的优化翻译版）

What Flowers Remember by Shannon Wiersbitzky follows early-teen, Delia, through two years of her life as this sensitive young girl watches her elderly neighbor, Old Red, transform from a healthy grandfather figure to a man losing his mind and memories to dementia/Alzheimer’s disease. The entire small, close-knit community of Tucker’s Ferry, West Virginia loves Old Red.Wiersbitzky artfully weaves this story of the emotional development of Delia by comparing human life with nature and flowers. Flowers are the sum of the genealogy of the seed from parent plants, just as Old Red is the sum of the memories from the small community in which he lived. Delia collects memories from Old Red’s family and friends and journals his life. She papers the walls of his room in his nursing home with these writings and pictures in hopes that Old Red won’t forget who he is, and that those who tend to his care come to know him for the capable man he was, rather than seeing him only as his disease. Through the process of honoring Old Red’s life, Delia comes to terms with his eventual death and in turn sees herself as a part of Old Red that lives on through the many memories she has of him.I highly recommend this book as a gift for any teen who has a loved one or family member declining from Alzheimer’s disease. My copy of the book is filled with highlights and notes on pages in which I choked back tears and gasped at the beauty of Wiersbitzky’s use of language and her comparisons of human life to the surrounding natural world.Five stars to What a Flower Remembers. It is a book I’ll never forget.