Raindrops on Roses: A Message from my Father

More than a month ago, my husband began receiving regular acupuncture treatments. While he goes to his weekly appointments, I wander around Pine Grove Mills with my tunes box and my camera. I see what there is to see.

There are two cemeteries I love there: a bigger one (with a single haphazard sunflower along its fence: see here and here) that is spacious and orderly under the open sky, and a tiny one that is old and gorgeous, called old Union Cemetery.

There are two benches on the hill above Union Cemetery that I eventually end up at, listening to music, taking pictures, reading my book. My husband comes by and picks me up there when he is done.

It was drizzling off and on all day. A thing that you notice when you are full of sorrow is that you feel comfortable in the rain. It seems right somehow that the sky just won't stop crying. I felt at home in the cemetery, in the rain.

The roses are still blooming there. We have not had hard frost yet. And with the rain, each bloom was covered in gorgeous raindrops that shone like jewels. You know me: I had the camera out, and I was taking lots of photos.

Then I turned my music off and sat down to read my book. I don't know why I knew, because it made not a single sound: But I looked up suddenly, and there was a hummingbird hanging in the air over one of the jeweled roses, looking directly at me; waiting to be seen.

I heard a voice - I think somewhere deep in my heart - and I suddenly realized that it was my father's voice. And he said, as clearly as if he were sitting right beside me: "Don't forget, Doll Baby. Don't forget what I told you about the roses."

And I suddenly realized I'd been photographing the roses, but I had not been SEEING them. And I remembered my father's words. . . .  It was Christmas a few years ago, and oh, it was bitter cold. There was ice and snow on the ground, and it felt like everything in the world that was beautiful had ended.

I think I was whining about the flowers being gone and how I missed them, and how everything was dead. And my father said: "Doll Baby, the roses may look like they're dead right now, but they're just sleeping beneath the snow. In the springtime, they will come again. You'll see."

It was such a simple lesson: about how things that look and feel like death may not really be the end; even those big and dark and scary things are only temporary. And that the cycles of life are restorative: to every thing there is a season; a time to every purpose under Heaven. From death into life, forever and ever, world without end. Amen.

I was talking with my parents a few months ago, sitting in their living room with them for what was (but I did not know it at the time) one of the last times we would be together there. Basking in their love. Chatting up a storm. And we talked about endings, and death, and loss, which have been so prevalent of late.

My father sighed as he mentioned the death of his big sister, Aunt Ella Mae, who thought when he was born that my dad was quite possibly the best thing invented since sliced bread; and his and Mom's firstborn, my big sister Barb, who passed in July 2019, blowing my world to bits. "These are things we must learn to accept," he urged me.

The hummingbirds left our house last week on the day that both of my parents died. Somehow, I knew that would be how it would end. We've been seeing a migratory bird or two on occasion, but they are just passers through, not our regular birds. Seeing this particular bird on this day was a gift: something special, just for me. As fast as it all happened, I never got a single photo.

I was sitting on my favorite bench, pondering all of these things, and trying to sort it all out, when I heard and saw my husband's car pull up. As I put my book in my bag, slung my camera on my shoulder, and stood up to go, I heard the whir of tiny wings. 

The hummingbird was back, at the butterfly bush by my head. "Remember," the voice said, again; my father's voice. "I will, Dad," I said. "I promise I will remember." In a second, the bird was gone.

Now, about my soundtrack song: as you read the title of this Blip, I imagine you were expecting to learn about a few of my favorite things. And you did indeed: family, roses, raindrops, hummingbirds. But our soundtrack song is this one: Bette Midler and Wynonna Judd, with The Rose.

Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun's love
In the spring becomes the rose