The Death of a Rose Bush

And a home from the past

As I walked into the old neighborhood I was greeted by the sound of birds, of distant barking dogs, of lawn mowers, and of unseen children playing. It sounded just like it did so long ago when I used to live there. It was the middle of summer and the neighborhood was vibrant with life. The giant trees lining the street where filled with green foliage. Bushes were blooming and flower gardens screamed with color. Birdsong blended with the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze. The sound of sprinklers provided a cadence as I walked down the sidewalk towards the house I used to live in. Startled by my footsteps, a squirrel scampered across the street.

It seemed like I was walking into a past life. It was a very different time when I had lived there. I was a very different person back then.

I walked the sidewalk for several blocks. When I got to the block where my old house was my pace slowed down. What was I hoping or expecting to see? What was I looking for? What would I feel as I reconnected to a different time and a different me?

And then I came to my old home and I froze in my tracks. I was shocked. The house was all boarded up. There were plywood boards haphazardly nailed across all the windows of the house and the front door. A piece of the roof awning above the front door was ripped from the roof and hanging down near the front door. Part of the roof gutter on the side of the house was also hanging down and swaying slightly in the breeze. The house had obviously been abandoned and shuttered up.

In this life I have been playing out a little idiosyncrasy for decades. Whenever I move into a new home one of the first things I do is plant a rose bush. It’s just a little ritual I’ve adhered to ever since I’ve had my own homes to live in since growing up and moving away from my family so many years ago. I don’t remember how it started and I’m not sure why I continued the practice for so many years. It was something I was compelled to do; something which I did not fight.

As a child I spent a good deal of time in my mother’s rose garden. There were a few dozen rose bushes at the home I grew up in. I don’t know how many times as a kid I stuck my nose into a rose and inhaled its heavenly fragrance. I fondled the leaves and I embraced the thorny branches. The beauty of the flowers and the fierceness of the thorns provided an all-encompassing contrast that seemed to exude the rich contrast of the spectrum of life. The rose bush exhibited a balance of extreme polarities. I embraced rosebushes hoping to take in that balance.

Rose bushes calm me and soothe me. They inspire me and they overpower me. And when their thorns prick me I am never, ever mad. The pricking brings as much joy to me as the glorious blooms. The love that enters me sniffing a rose is as joyous as the joy that enters me when a rose thorn pierces my flesh. This may seem a bit daffy to some but to me the joy is really the same. The rose offers love and joy either passively or aggressively. And in that it is a true master in this realm. Oh, how I long to be like a rose.

In my later adult years I learned of the intimate connection between the rose and the Female Christ energies. This guaranteed my continued fixation on planting a rose bush where ever I lived. It also increased exponentially what I learned and felt from every rose bush I ever planted — and every rose bush I have since come into contact with.

After I saw my old home all boarded up I was taken aback for a moment and it took me a while before I took in the entire scene. I could not take another step. I just stood there on the sidewalk looking at my old home.

As I looked around I saw that the house had not been lived in for quite some time — perhaps not since I lived there. The yard was completely unkempt. The only thing green was the weeds. Trash was strewn about the yard. The mailbox, once sitting atop a wooden post, was now lying among the weeds, the post lying next to it. Taking in the bigger view I realized that all the deciduous trees were dead — and there were almost twenty of them. None of them had a leaf on them. In the middle of summer when all the other trees were covered with green, all the trees on the lot were barren and dead and lifeless.

But then I noticed the two pine trees and the juniper tree. They were still alive! The pine trees were close to a hundred feet tall. As I craned my neck to look up to their tops I realized that they were just as alive and well as when I lived there. But they were a little taller. They seemed to defy the death that had obviously occurred there. They were as alive and as vibrant as ever. I stared up at them for quite some time and in the process I was brought back to life. I was able to connect to something still living. It was like seeing old friends.

I slowly began moving and soon found myself walking across the weeds and before I knew it I was approaching the first of the two pine trees — the two trees were only a few feet apart and were like twins. Both twins were almost a hundred feet tall but one of them was a few feet taller. It was the taller tree that I reached first. Like two lovers who had been separated for years but who run into each other in a train station and run into each other’s arms, I walked right up to the first tree and fell into an amorous embrace. I hugged that tree like an old friend I had not seen in years. As I hugged it I let loose a torrent of love — a love I had always felt for the tree. When I had lived there I had hugged it many a time.

My hug lasted for several minutes. Not only was I pouring out all the love in my being but I also felt all the love of the tree. We really were like old friends meeting again after so many years. I didn’t care for a second what anyone watching might have been thinking. I was oblivious to that. All I cared about was reconnecting to that glorious tree. My body cried with joy as I hugged that tree. It was a moment that can only be described as one of the happiest of my life.

I don’t know how long that tree hug lasted. Time evaporated once I started hugging. I was suddenly in tree time — a “whole ‘nother dimension.” Through that tree I connected to everything I wanted to connect to. That tree far outlasted every tenant who ever lived in the house at the base of that tree — and its twin. Those two pine trees had witnessed everything that had ever gone on in the house and the premises around those trees for far longer than any human.

I connected to not only the time I spent living there but the entire time of the lifetime of those two pine trees. I saw it all and I felt it all. And, I’m sure, the pine trees felt my entire life, including the time since I had last been there. We exchanged energies like any two living beings. We revealed ourselves to each other completely. Very few humans can do this with each other. Even when we hug each other.

As I finished the divine tree hug and then hugged the other pine tree my vision began to refocus on the terrible state of the property. There was a lilac bush not far from the tall pine tree twins that I had nurtured back to life while living there. The bush was scraggly and barely living and had no blooms that first spring I lived there but I watered it and fertilized it and loved it. The second summer there it had bloomed and put forth a good deal of growth. Now suddenly I saw that it was dead. There were no leaves, no blossoms; just a bare skeleton of a once lovely bush. I was saddened to see my old lilac bush friend gone.

And then I focused beyond the dead lilac bush towards the very back of the property. There, next to the fence at the back of the property was a very old apple tree. That first summer living there the tree had a few tiny apples all of which were riddled with worm holes. I had pruned the tree that fall and gave it a lot of love. The second summer — when there was plenty of rain — the tree produced much larger apples. I had harvested a couple baskets of them and they were delicious. I ate apples from that tree for weeks. But now the tree was almost dead. There was only one branch left with leaves on it.

I couldn’t bring myself to go over to the apple tree. Instead I turned around and headed back towards the front of the house. Just in front of the porch at the front door is where I had planted a flower garden — and a rose bush. I had encircled the flower garden with a rock border. As I approached the flower garden I saw that the rock border was still there — although some of the rocks had been dispersed. But there was not a single flower.

And the rose bush was dead! My heart sank. I stepped over the rocks and knelt down beside the skeleton of a rose bush. I saw that it had not grown much since I left. The identification tag was still tied to the base of the bush although all the lettering had been bleached away by the sun. I stared at the rose bush with great sadness. And I wondered what state all the other rose bushes I had planted at various homes over the years were in. Surely they were not all dead. Surely others had come along and cared for them. But apparently this rose bush had never been cared for after my departure. Why did no one bother to care for it? Did no one appreciate the gorgeous pink blooms? Did anyone even ever notice it? How can anyone let a rose bush die? I slowly reached out and touched a dry almost black cane of the bush. There were not even any dry leaves left dangling from the branches. It had obviously been dead for some time.

I spent a few minutes paying my respects to the rose bush and then stood up. Looking around I saw that the forsythia bush at the corner of the front of the house was also dead. I remembered how excited I got when it bloomed. It was one of the first signs of spring before that glorious second summer living there. The yard was so lush and vibrant that year. Now, it was a desert with almost no life. I was shocked and very saddened.

I turned around and looked away from the house at all the neighboring houses. They all still had green lawns and flowering bushes and flowers and tall green trees. My old house was like an oasis of death in a sea of green. How could this happen? And why did I come to see this?

I decided I needed to leave quickly before the sadness overcame me. I walked back to the sidewalk and quickly headed away from the house. I was in a state of shock. I had to get away from there. I stopped, though, about fifty paces down the street to turn around and look one last time at the house and property. It looked so utterly forlorn and different from when I had lived there. The life seemed to have been sucked out of the place. But then I looked up at the tall pine trees and realized there was still some life left. I wondered how long the trees would last. Someone would surely eventually buy the property, demolish the house, cut down the trees, and build a new house. In my mind I said good-bye to the pine trees then turned around and walked away — never to look back.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. White Feather Archive Index