These roses are my mom.
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| Summer 2014 - roses and bees |
They were her roses – one of several bushes planted in my parents’ back yard in Omaha. My dad was taking them out around 12 years
ago and I carefully lugged one from Nebraska to Virginia, in the hopes that it
would survive and I could plant it. It
worked. And now, each spring it blossoms.
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| This year's blooms |
It doesn’t make the
prettiest flowers – they are a bit scrawny and don’t have many leaves. The roses do not have a scent, which always
disappoints me. Then stems are short so
they are hard to cut and bring indoors.
And the they have some very wicked thorns – I have been cut by them many
times.
But for all of those
shortcomings, I still look at the bush and smile every spring when ROSES APPEAR. I am sure if my mom was still around she
would have replaced this rather beat up rose bush years ago. But she is gone, and the roses remain in my
yard as a reminder of HER.
I share this story to
encourage you to keep a LIVING part of your loved ones when they are gone. Instead of only holding onto remembrances
like tea cups or photos, try and keep something that “breathes”, that
lives. Keep a plant, a tree, a rose bush… I am inspired each spring when Mom’s roses
bloom, and I imagine that you will get the same joy out of keeping a living
thing from your loved one, too.
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| Such beauty, and such a sweet reminder |
Of course, this plan has a
major pitfall: at some point, the living
remembrance item is going to die. That’s
inevitable and must be accepted. I went
through that a couple of years ago when a beautiful plant I kept from my mom’s
funeral died. I was quite upset, and
when I tried to figure out why I realized that somehow I was trying to “keep my
mom alive” by keeping that plant green.
And when the plant died, I felt like a failure, like I had failed my
mom. I was really depressed about
it. But, it did teach me a lesson, and I
feel like now I can be happy and celebrate the last tiny living “piece of my
mom”, the rose bush, while it is here, and am better ready to deal with the
reality that someday it, too, will die.
So there you have it –
Susan’s “helpful tip” for dealing with grief I guess: keep some LIVING thing. And when it blooms (or fruits or sheds or
whatever it does), you will be reminded of your love, and you will smile.
(If you want to read the
other piece I wrote about the plant from my mom’s funeral, you can see it
here: Learning Acceptance (link)
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