Someone mailed funeral flower arrangements to my house every Monday for eleven weeks.

  

I live alone and work from home, so my life is about as boring as it gets. Most weeks follow the exact same routine. 

I answer emails, attend meetings, go to the gym, and occasionally meet friends for dinner. Nothing unusual ever happens in my neighborhood.

Then the flowers started showing up.

The first arrangement arrived on a Monday morning. It was one of those expensive sympathy displays people send after a funeral.

 The card attached simply said, "Thinking of you during this difficult time."

I assumed it had been delivered to the wrong address.

The florist disagreed.

They confirmed my name, my address, and my phone number were all listed correctly.

The second arrangement arrived the following Monday.

Then another.

Then another.

By the fifth week my neighbors had started asking questions. One woman across the street actually stopped me while I was checking my mail and asked which family member I'd lost. 

When I told her nobody had died, she looked completely confused.

At first I thought somebody was playing a prank.

Then the cards started becoming personal.

One mentioned the coffee shop I visit every morning.

Another referenced the running trail I use on weekends.

One even mentioned my dog by name.

That's when the situation stopped being funny.

Whoever was sending these things knew details about my life.

I reported it to the police. The officer was polite but explained that sending flowers wasn't exactly a crime. His advice was simple.

Install cameras.

Keep records.

Call again if things escalated.

So I did.

For three weeks nothing happened.

Then one of my cameras captured something interesting.

About ten minutes after a flower delivery arrived, a woman I'd never seen before walked onto the sidewalk across from my house and started taking photos of my front porch.

She never approached the door.

She never touched anything.

She simply took several photos and left.

The next Monday she came back.

Then she came back again the week after.

Every time flowers arrived, she appeared shortly afterward.

I handed the footage over to the police.

A week later the officer called me back.

They had identified her.

What they discovered made absolutely no sense.

The woman wasn't related to me.

She wasn't a former coworker.

She wasn't a neighbor.

She lived nearly forty miles away.

According to investigators, she'd been posting the flower photos online for months along with strange captions about justice and accountability.

The problem was that I'd never met her.

Not once.

I was completely confused.

Then the real story came out.

Five years earlier, a man with my exact first and last name had worked at the same company as her. That man had filed a complaint that eventually got her fired.

She spent years blaming him for everything that went wrong in her life.

Eventually she searched for him online.

She found me instead.

Same name.

Different person.

She never bothered to verify anything.

She simply convinced herself I was the man she hated.

The flowers weren't meant to be kind.

They were meant to be a warning.

In her mind, she was reminding me every week that she hadn't forgotten.

But the investigation uncovered something even stranger.

I wasn't the first person she'd targeted.

Police discovered at least three other cases involving people who happened to share names with individuals from her past.

One person received threatening letters.

Another received anonymous complaints sent to his employer.

A third had been dealing with mysterious deliveries for months.

All because they shared names with people she blamed for various problems.

I wasn't special.

I was just next on the list.

The final flower arrangement never reached my house.

Police intercepted it before delivery and paid the woman a visit the same day.

After that, everything stopped.

No more flowers.

No more cards.

No more strange photographs.

No more reminders of a grudge that had absolutely nothing to do with me.

A few months later the investigator handling the case called with one final update.

During questioning, the woman admitted she'd never actually confirmed my identity.

Not once.

She saw my name online and decided that was good enough.

Eleven weeks.

Eleven flower arrangements.

Hundreds of dollars spent.

All directed at the wrong person.

The strangest part is that I still have no idea what the real man she was looking for looks like.

But wherever he is, I hope he's having a much quieter year than I did.