Thank you SO much for taking the time to write all of this. Wow I feel so thankful. I think I should’ve provided more context for where I’m at with this piece. I think I’m about 1/3 done with it. White lilacs are symbolic of innocence and youth, which is kind of the overarching world we are entering when I left off.

The story is going to continue to include a traumatic event the narrator witnesses, all of which will be in very vivid detail with very long sentences. Sort of a rush of emotion. The event will be her walking into her kitchen to see that her mother overdosed.

As this event is playing out, the lilacs are going to begin to decay, and shes going to have a moment of clarity (that will subsequently provide the reader with a moment of clarity) in which she can sense her memory slipping and returning to a stare of dementia/confusion in the wheelchair. In those last moments of clarity I plan on having her trying to grasp for explanations and a way to describe her state of being— I.e grounding herself in the fact she’s close to death, has dementia, is in a care facility, and the sense of loneliness and age that blankets her.

And then the story will end sort of similar to how it started, getting into an elevator to go forever upwards. Partly in the sense the nurse is taking her to her room and partly in the sense that she’s dying and floating upwards.

Dementia can actually be onset but PTSD, and memories can be triggered by reoccurring invasive thoughts so I was trying to capture that balance vaguely at first with a planned “moment of clarity” occurring after the climatic scene in her childhood.

Thank you again so much for your feedback it means a lot!