Item :The Associated Press  —  May 14, 2010  — "Sunflowers are now blooming outside Michael Jackson's crypt. Grower Jason Levin on Friday delivered up to 2,000 sunflowers after hearing Lisa Marie Presley complain there were only a few bouquets, candles and gifts surrounding the tomb." See the video.

Some people object to people buying flowers for graves or crypts, or for funerals. Some people call this spending money on the dead. Of course people may spend their own money any way they choose.  Very few people, if anyone, ever spend money on the dead. The living spend money for their own needs.

The phrase, "Sunflowers bloom,"  brought  to mind the famous poem by Walt Whitman, " When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd," that mourns the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln.  Of course Michael Jackson wasn't Lincoln. And Lincoln wasn't Michael Jackson. This post is about mourning, about a star that has fallen from the Western sky, about grief, and about  the offering of flowers, not to the dead, not to death, but to life.  The offering is for the benefit of the living whom mourn, and whom say to the world, and more importantly to themselves, that like flowers in bloom, the memory of the fallen star shall forever bloom.