BMH grief wall memorializes people who have died
Tanisha Bowman started her workday on Tuesday by removing chrysanthemum flowers, or mums, from a wall and replacing them with origami cranes with names written on them.
Bowman had been preparing the “grief wall” at Butler Memorial Hospital for months and had covered the green backdrop with at least 100 mums to accentuate the picture frames and lettered quotes also populating the wall. But in some Asian cultures and France, the flowers represent death, and are traditionally placed at grave sites.
People who notice the grief wall, which was placed outside the Tower Entrance at BMH on Tuesday, are meant to take a mum down from the wall, write the name of a deceased loved one on a paper crane and place it where the mum was, to symbolize their making peace with death, Bowman said.
“One of my jobs is processing loss to the dying and for the people grieving,” said Bowman, a palliative care social worker at BMH. “I walk them through their own grieving process because they can really do it however they want. This is one way they can take a moment to process.”
While Bowman had the idea for the wall several months ago, Tuesday was National Grief Awareness Day, so she planned to display it until next Tuesday.
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