Your mom, and the flowers.... God picks the flowers (our young ones, lost too soon)...
Did she say something about stars as souls, too?
"Maybe hell is where we are now" - it makes sense to me!
Your mom, burying how many children - she'd understand this:
“Offering it up”: Is that still a thing?
“Penance” has received a bad name over the last thirty or forty years, largely because it was taught to many in the language of punishment rather than in the language of virtue, offering, and peace.

So, why not penance? Why not take some of one’s suffering and — rather than popping a pill — endure it for a bit; live with it and in it, and do something with it; make it worthwhile instead of meaningless.

If we are told to “offer it up” at all today, it is usually in a tone of sarcasm or very weak irony. To moderns, the concept has come to be regarded — like formerly common practices as prayerful ejaculations or a solemn breast-beat — as a quaint throwback to a time when notions of sin and reparation seemed to consume entirely too much of the Catholic sensibility.

(Thanks for reading and commenting!)