Flower Garden | Healing Garden: Parents Find Solace In Memorial Garden
The daylily’s beautiful bloom only lasts a day before it withersin the evening.
Chris Barry keeps a patch of daylilies in her garden as a symbolof how briefly something beautiful can stay before it goes away.Her son, Cullan, like this flower, blossomed in vibrant beauty, butthen went away much too soon.
It was only in May when a tragic act of impulse ended the lifeof this athletic, good-looking 17-year-old. Over the past fewmonths, Chris Barry endured a parent’s worst nightmare by buildinga garden in her son’s memory.
The garden is a colorful mosaicof cosmos, black-eyed susans,bachelor buttons, poppies and otherflowers that have taken up theentire front lawn of Daniel and Chris Barry’s home at 3480 HannibalSt. She started the project last year, but after Cullan’s death, itgrew into a memorial for her son.
And a place to heal.
“It’s very therapeutic,” Barry said. “It’s given me something todo, something to focus on.”
The garden also has given the community a tangible way to showits support to the Barry family in the form of donated plants andgarden decorations.
GIFTED ATHLETE
Cullan was a gifted hockey player who had been on a pair ofskates from the time he could walk. The Butte High student playedon the Montana Thunderblades hockey team ” which won the U16National Championship in 2010.
His teammates paid tribute to him by building trellises out ofbroken hockey sticks.
“As a hockey mom, I have lots of broken hockey sticks in thebasement,” she said.
Donations to her garden came from friends and relatives from allover Butte. Some were completely unexpected.
Barry recalled taking her car to the shop for repairs earlierthis summer. When she returned to pick up her vehicle, there was arose bush waiting for her in the car.
“It’s a reminder of how much he was loved,” she
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