Violets and roses

Rosa glauca, from Wiki-commons

 It's been a year since my friend Laurie slipped away from the world, despite her brave fight.
 
When I visited her in Seattle, just a few weeks before she died, I remember walking into the little bungalow house she shared with her husband, my dear friend John, and their two grown daughters. The front walk passed beneath a wooden arbor that John had built for her, twined with a species rose just burgeoning with red new growth, and there were violets blooming in the small garden bed just inside the yard.

I told her how beautiful I thought they were, and John quite proudly told me about the rose. It was special, he told me, a rare and special rose that Laurie had planted years ago.

During that visit, she was still strong and we all thought she would stay with us longer. I went back to the hotel I was staying in during that visit, and thought about the rose, and how even in her illness Laurie was still surrounded by beauty and love. Then it came to me. The rose was rosa glauca. I had given Laurie a rooted slip from the plant that grew in my own garden, over fifteen years before - when our children were still babies.

What lasts are memories and love. Violets and roses.