Roses and Thorns.

Blooms and prickles. Such is marriage.

Ron always gave me roses. 

I hum as I clip a few from the bushes growing beneath the front window. The bright hues of the Knock-Out rose bushes have faded a little with the cooler  temperatures of Autumn, but the blooms are still open and fragrant. I take a few from each bush, dropping them onto a sheet of newspaper at my feet, satisfied that there will be enough to fill a vase, a dozen or more.

 I smile at the bounty, recalling the years when only a single rose--all my husband  could afford-- lay on the kitchen table next to an anniversary card. 

“You don’t need to get me roses,” I would tell him. “We need bread for the kids more. I can do without roses.”

“But I can’t do without giving them to you,” he’d say. 

And so the roses continued, year after year. One year it was a silk rose from the Dollar Store, one year a glass rose he’d seen at a craft sale. More often, though, they were red roses with long stems, tied with a ribbon or wrapped in green paper.

“American Beauties,” Ron would say, “for my own American Beauty.”

The memory makes me smile, but an errant prickle works its way into my garden glove.

“Ouch!” I say and drop the rose I am holding.

Roses, however sweet and beautiful and fragrant they are, have thorns. 

I take off my glove and  inspect my thumb. The injury is slight, just a surface prick, not a soul penetrating wound. I’ve had them as well, deep injuries that took years to scab over and heal, scars I still carry in my heart.

Blooms and prickles. Such is marriage.

I put my glove back on and snip a few more roses. The bushes are growing up above the windowsill and once the blooming is over and before winter begins, my son and I will need to cut them down so their offerings will be bigger and brighter next year, visible from where Ron’s lift chair sits in the living room next to the fireplace.

“Take some roses home with you,” he was fond of saying to the nurses who came to care for him while I was at work. “Linda, cut down some roses. We have so many!” I would go out with my gloves and my shears and trim a few off, wrap the stems in wet cotton, and put paper around the bouquet. 

We shared from our harvest. No matter where we were.

I feel a chill in the air and pull my sweatshirt closer around me. I have enough roses now, I think, enough to give to Ron just as he always gave them to me. I will arrange the red and pink and white blooms into the blue vase and place it where he can see it and enjoy it, where he can remember that it was never the number of roses that mattered, nor the thorns that came with them, it was the act of giving.

We gave to each other. We wounded each other. We healed each other.

We loved each other.

I put away my clippers and my gloves, gather the roses up, and carry them into the kitchen. I arrange them carefully in the blue vase that Ron liked, taking time to add a few wisps of baby’s breaths and greenery. I add a blue bow, the same color as Ron’s tuxedo the day we married. The roses were white that day.

I wash my hands and put on my coat.

The bells of the carillon are playing as I drive slowly up the hill, the blue vase on the passenger seat next to me. I park my car by the two intertwined trees, together forever as they both stretch towards the sun. It is a beautiful October day, just as it was on that long ago day we twined our own lives together.

Vase in my arms, I begin to walk.

The grass has covered the bare dirt. I settle the vase onto the India Red stone and brush a few fallen leaves away. I kneel and trace the name engraved there.

Ronald A. Cobourn. 

“Happy anniversary,” I tell him. “Now and forever.”