All the last week of advent I watched from our kitchen window roses bloom on the Zephirine Drouhin rose bushes, beautiful old-fashioned climbers that we planted about 4 years ago, with blooms that are still deliciously fragrant, the kind where you can’t seem to be able to breathe deep enough to capture and hold the scent, elusive…impossible to bottle, they demand that you be present in the garden to enjoy their beauty and scent. Our roses were very gracious with us this year, we could not seem to summon the energy or time to care for them proper through the hot and humid summer…and yet, there they were offering us perfect blooms in late December.
I always associate the rose hedge with Justin coming home for a visit in May after the end of the semester. He would walk
out with me when the roses were in all their glory in that first flush of blooms, hundreds of deep pink petals. He saw the miracle of God’s creation everywhere and would look at those roses in the most magical time to be in the garden, early evening, and say how amazing they were, how beautiful. I would see all that I had not yet finished in the garden, Justin would simply see the beauty of what God had accomplished. I forced myself to go outside last week to walk the rose garden, it was bittersweet. I wanted him beside me to marvel at those brave roses that were blooming, their scent even richer and heavier in the cold. I was still fretting at all that needed to be done and he would have had only eyes for that which was before him…perfect roses in late December.
I asked Doug to go out and cut a handful of roses for me to take to Justin’s grave the afternoon of Christmas eve and he brought back a wonderful fragrant handful. I leave early so I have time to make a visit before opening the church for the first Mass. I don’t think I shall ever get used to the incongruity of this Christmas visit, you step into another realm as you step out of the car, clutching a handful of roses, tissues…I walk to his grave, heels sinking in the mud…same heels I wore for his funeral….hating the shoes, hating that I am standing at my boy’s grave. I tuck the roses in the evergreen wreath we had placed at the beginning of December and the roses look strangely pretty nestled in the greens. Torn between not being able to stay long, knowing I have to get focused on the task ahead. I start the ritual for leaving that realm, for stepping through that doorway between my two worlds, my two lives…I walk back through the cold grass, looking over my shoulder as I go…back into the car, apply clean tissues to my face… clean the mud off my heels…breathe.
There is no more anesthesia left this second year. Your mind tentatively reaches out a tendril to touch that reality of life without Justin and finds it so cold, so painful…that it draws back…to touch that is to touch that icy water that he drowned in…and yet the mind must continue to reach out, to scout the new territory….one small tendril at a time, advance, retreat…regroup, advance again…finding something to wrap around, an anchor for the next step, an anchor strong enough so that when you stumble and fall, it catches you and holds fast.
I look out the window today and there are roses still blooming, in the cold wet rain…their deep pink is a startling relief in the drear of the garden in winter. I don’t sense in them a defiance of the season or the cold…but a persistence to do what they were created to do, to grow and flower. Their boldness in setting buds, turning their little heads towards the pale winter sun…wildly generous rose to squander its resources to set buds and flower, even with woeful neglect. I know I shall need to prune them in early March, but feel most inadequate. I know how to prune, where to snip…but am humbled by this rose bush, who am I to decide which branch stays and which branch goes….how can I know which branch will bear the best fruit, the most perfect rose. My own life needs pruning…but which branch?…when to prune?…if one prunes too quickly you can lose the best flower, if one waits too long the branch only bleeds the others dry and produces nothing….sometimes stillness is the best activity…to wait and be still.
There is one task that I can move quickly on, a bit of “pruning”, I grab those black heels, worn and torn, heels stained with mud from graves and throw them out and am quite satisfied with that “snip”…its a small branch, but it is a start.
Terri, I am always reminded of that phrase “God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December” whenever you tell me about these roses. I know Justin was walking with you while you looked at them. I am sure they are beautiful in his wreath.