Feast After Famine: My Grandmother's Rose

My Grandmother Josephine had a rose bush—a robust, fiercely thorny, glorious red rose bush that bloomed over six decades before she asked my mother to dig it up and move it more than 200 miles away. 

My mother is an avid gardener whose porches overflow with stylishly-designed pots of annuals every summer. Her garden beds bloom with enviable color and texture, and she tends an army of magnificent orchids. Yet even she was terrified of transplanting my grandmother's beloved rose bush for fear of losing it. She'd be moving it to different soil in a new state with a hotter, more humid summer and menacing beetles. The risk of its dying—of disappointing my grandmother—was real. 

My grandmother asked her to take it when she was in the nursing home, her house about to be sold. Who on earth could say "no" to that?

So, my parents moved the bush and my mother fretted. She watched and waited and, over time, the rose did more than just survive. It thrived. 

My mother took pictures of the blooms and sent them to my grandmother. She brought blooms when she and my father made the trip over the mountains to visit. She gave one to my grandmother's namesake, my daughter Josephine, on her fourth birthday. My mother placed my grandmother's statue of the Virgin Mary next to the bush. Keepsakes of my grandmother's became a cherished spot in the garden. 

Two nights after my grandmother died, when the family gathered at my Aunt Sarah's and Uncle Nick's, we sorted through old photos she kept in her room. Among the wedding and school portraits, the children's photos and snaps of family and friends, was a shot of the rose bush that pre-dated my grandmother's move in the late 1970s from a house in the center of town. It's from the house where my father grew up, the place where my earliest memories of my grandparents formed. 

The photo was unremarkable. I can't even recall whether the roses were in bloom. But it's a historical record, of sorts. A witness of the bush's long life and importance to my grandmother. 

On Mother's Day, my mother cut three clippings from the bush and sent me home with directions on how to get it to root. It's something she's never done and certainly an art I'm totally unfamiliar with as well. Earlier in the day, we met with a master gardener at an area garden shop and he gave us a step-by-step along with a sobering dose of reality: expect a 50 percent mortality rate getting the clippings to root, he said. 

Joy.

As I wrapped up an afternoon planting in the garden, a light rain started to fall. I set up a makeshift potting table on top of the grill in the garage and got to work on my grandmother's flower. I "wounded" the clippings with a knife, dipped them in hormone powder, potted and watered them. Then, I topped them with empty plastic bottles and set them in the sun where they'll stay covered for the next six to eight weeks. 

While we were at my parent's house Sunday, my father and my husband took my children to run at the playground up the street. By my father's telling, my 4-year-old son climbed one of the structures and casually remarked: "You know, Grandma Josephine is watching us. She can look down and see everything."

My father nearly fell over at the mention of his mother. 

I thought about this as I tended to her rose. I hope it's true. I hope she was watching and that she pulls some strings with the man upstairs and helps her rose grow. To live on in our garden here, with us.

Click here to read more of Dana's Feast After Famine.