Where have all the flowers gone

It's a flower themed post but it's also sad. 
I will show you a dress:

There's an awesome 70s maxi dress with an awesome print; but first, I need to pick up where I left off. Still so sad.
As I sat at my parents' kitchen table with my dad after dinner, I gazed out the window at the yard. You go down the steps from the screened porch and there's a little bricked area before the grass where they have the grill. I remember our neighbor's cat, Baxter always came running when my dad was grilling, and yes; my dad always shared.
This brought me to the memory of that little toe-headed boy in denim overalls, the look only a small child can pull off. We were sitting out on the porch steps one late afternoon. He called the cat, "Baster" (sounded like "bastard") and smiled with delight as he pet the fluffy gray kitty. He said when he grew up he wanted to have two cats, as he held up two fingers. "One Baster and one Tabby." The latter was our family's pet.
"How long will this sadness last?" I asked my dad.
He paused a moment and said, "forever" before taking a breath and adding, "it's still so hard to believe..."
Dark. This was Sunday, the day after we finally held the memorial service for our dearly departed Jesse.

 There's my angel in a black and white childhood photo. The service was held in a church (despite the family not actually having a church) and this beautiful floral wreath was made by an aunt on his father's side. This stood on the alter alongside with his ashes, a recent picture, the certificate of his organ donation, and some sneakers. The initial blow of a loved one's death brings a strong pain that soon fades into a dull sadness. However, as soon as I walked in and found a seat alongside my family, those wailing tears were once again flowing. Sitting a row behind me was Stevie who had been best friends with Jesse for years and now this poor teenager was going through something most lucky kids never have to. It became so real. This is Jesse's memorial service. There's his picture and those are his ashes. There's your whole family crying.

Look at those sneakers; they have wings! My sister told me they're made of old basketballs. He collected sneakers and those were his favorite.
It wasn't totally planned, but I was grateful for the opportunity to share my eulogy. It was really important to me. When it comes to writing, some peeps say I is pretty good and by then I had been "writing" what I wanted to say for weeks in my head. I loved this boy and I wanted to share with everyone, the reasons why he meant so much to me and to so many others.
I approached the church podium thing (pulpit?) with a handful of tissues and absolutely zero fucks about how a room of people were looking at me while I looked absolutely awful. With bloodshot eyes and a tear streaked face, I just started talking.
And I talked a lot. My uncle Jeff had spoken first and he related a story about how Jesse played with all the neighborhood kids and once grabbed a smaller kid from his scooter before that kid rode in front of an oncoming car. I went with the savior theme and said "If it wasn't for Jesse, I don't know where I would be today..." before telling everyone how I came to find my path as a teacher thanks to him.
Afterwards, everyone said I nailed it, but I want to make it clear that I did it for Jesse and not for the pats on the back. We lost an incredible person and I wanted to pay a tribute that would make him proud.
Here I will leave a picture that I share in a story last spring as the theme of forsythias serve to tell my stories metaphorically. They are bright, beautiful yellow flowers that grow on bushes in the spring. Some jerks trim them into little boxes but that's dumb because they are supposed to grow free. Because they only grow for such a short time. It's like, you look at them and admire these burning bushes and then you turn around and their gone.

Now, did I have a refash around here?

 So it's a too big dress that happens to have a floral print I can get on board with. Because it's black. Look at this:

I guess I took a lousy picture of a page from People magazine. Blossoms on black! Look at what it says underneath the header, it says "moody vibe."
So, first thing I did was try and sew down all the extraneous fabric around the awesome bustline.

Extra material was all folded under the v neck and it kept sticking out. It has that really cool gather at the bust that I like to do sometimes.
I obviously had to take in the sides, because it was muu muu like. I shortened the sleeves. Also, I hemmed it, but just a little. So the obvious sash belt was kinda skinny.

For an anticlimactic finish...here, look at this...

The pictures were taken with my camera on a tripod after I'd worn the dress all day. What I'm saying is: the pics tell a different story than my mirror did. That's why I'm sharing one or two at the most. These pics bad, I looked decent.

It's the sash. I tied it weird or something.