In the last year of my grandmother’s life, she planted a rose.
There was a pole in front of the house that we shared with her. Apparently, the pole was for a gas light, which had long ceased to be functional. My grandmother thought that the pole was ugly, but getting rid of it would be an expensive and dangerous process if it was even possible at all.
So, my grandmother dealt with this in the way she dealt with most things. She decided to plant a rose to wind around and cover the pole.
By her ninetieth birthday in October, it had grown to quite an impressive and magnificent rose, and it did indeed cover the ugly pole.
The rose bloomed until the day that my grandmother passed, which was the same day as the first snow of that year.
The next Spring, the rose bloomed again, but I think that I did not know what to do with it. My grandmother also left behind a wonderful garden, but all I could do was to make a feeble attempt to tend to the perennials. I completely lost the battle with the weeds.
This Spring, I am not sure why or how, but I seem to have found the energy and the inspiration to start my own garden. I bought seeds for the vegetables and herbs I liked and cooked with. I never had any talent or inclination for gardening in the past. I was never even able to keep houseplants alive. Indeed, once my spouse and I had a cactus that lived for years until I took an interest in it, and it died shortly after.
Despite my newly found interest, the rose did not come back to life this Spring. I am guessing that I did not prune it well enough or did something else wrong. I tried everything to bring it back to life, including giving it banana peels, which was my grandmother’s method of feeding her roses.
My Swedish relatives came for a visit a few weeks ago. In consulting with a family relationship chart, it seems that they are my first cousins, once removed…by blood and by marriage. Or I could use my spouse’s grandmother’s rule. “We do not remove any of our cousins, we keep them all,” and just say that they are my cousins.
In any case, the rest of my family came for a gathering as well, and during the gathering both my Swedish cousins and my uncle declared that the rose was past hope.
We had a bonfire at this family gathering, and I cut down and burned the remains of the rose in the bonfire. It seemed fitting to do this when the family was gathered.
The next day, my Swedish cousins brought me to the store and they purchased a new rose. They also helped me to plant it around the pole.
The rose was then christened Ulla’s rose. Ulla was the name of my grandmother, as well as the name of one of the Swedish cousins who bought and helped plant the rose. Cousin Ulla then told us about a Swedish tradition concerning the passing of a King. Everyone would declare, “the King has died, long live the King.” In that spirit she declared, “the Rose has died, long live the Rose.”
For the past several years, Mormor (“grandmother” in Swedish) and I lived in the same two flat, which was owned by my aunt. In the front of the house, there was a lamp post, which used to be a working gas lamp. Mormor thought it was ugly. She researched, and she found that it would be costly and perhaps dangerous to remove it, so she devised a way to make it beautiful. Last spring, she planted roses around it with the plan that they would climb and cover the post.
