“O gather me the rose, the rose, 
While yet in flower we find it, 
For summer smiles, but summer goes, 
And winter waits behind it.”

–William Ernest Henley

I can’t top Mister Henley in writing about roses, but they spoke eloquently on their own to me this past weekend.

Suddenly, it seemed, on a gorgeous day they were in full bloom in our back yard. Beautiful blood-red roses. They were showing off their splendor on a bush in our back yard, planted from a cutting of a bush from the back yard of my mother-in-law, who planted it there many years ago.

On the night Myrt died, the priest who prayed at her bedside had some of her daughters go cut some flowers from the rose bush outside and bring them into her room. Then he put them on her chest.

Memories of her roses and, more poignantly, memories of her massaged my heart. Moments before she died, while several of us surrounded her bed, someone said, “Look at her.” Many of us lifted our bowed heads to see her face glowing as if lit by an interior lantern. It was enough to catch your breath. It was like that for a few precious moments before fading out.

“Gentle woman, quiet light,” are some lyrics to a Catholic song about Our Blessed Mother Mary. This song sung at Myrt Vanhoof’s funeral Mass was about her, too. Those words, at the end of her long life, could’ve been engraved on her tombstone.

Then there was an announcement at our Sunday morning service that the Mass intention was for, among others, Maria Tompkins. She was the first name mentioned, and even though I had known it was coming, it briefly took my breath away. Nine years ago yesterday, April 15, she died in a NICU unit, only two days old. A kidney disease that started in the womb ultimately resulted in her premature death.

And on a rose-colored weekend, I recalled the “Maria Garden” my son and daughter-in-law, Matt and Elizabeth, nurture in their front yard in Maria’s honor with orange roses. Although it pierces my heart every time I think about Maria’s death, somehow I am comforted by the interior Whisper that reassures: “Be not sad; she is with Me.”

We don’t know when the final horn will sound for our lives, but we know we all will suffer, in some form or another. We all will laugh and we all will cry. We all will mourn and we all will rejoice. There will be storms and there will be sunshine, even as we experienced in a short span of time last week.

And, yes, there will be thorns, but there will be beauty. The rose exemplifies this. The rose bush in our yard comes from good stock and somehow has thrived, no matter what adversity it faces. The bigger the adversity, the more determined it seems to be to give its best.

Maybe there’s a metaphor there upon which we can meditate and then give our best.