The last Rose
Created | Updated Jun 18, 2007
The last Rose
Helen had not been back to the small town she had lived in for ten years where her married life had begun and where her four children had been born.
It was a lovely little town sitting on a small hill above the big river, with pretty large and small houses in bright and light colors, with the sweet scents of tropical flowers in their gardens filling the air.
The town was clean and neat there on the hill looking down on the river. It consisted principally of a wide cobble stoned main street which divided further down by a praça into two narrow streets where the houses on both sides were smaller and stood closer together. These two narrow streets ended at another square and then several streets led down to the center square with the cathedral at the far end and shops on both sides and a rather grand hotel a little higher up opposite the cathedral. There was a modern cinema next to the hotel and once a week an open market in front of the big building that housed many small stores where you could find nearly everything you needed from pots and pans to furniture and sewing needles. Beyond this was the river. The river flowed red and lazy in summer, fast and clear during the rainy season. Sometimes it ran so full that the low center of town got flooded.
All transit from north to south of the country, and vice versa, had to cross this river by the ferry boat and often there were long lines of trucks waiting their turn to get on the ferry. At the time Helen lived in the town, the ferry boat was the only way to get to the other side of the river. People in small cars often stayed over night at the hotel before continuing south or north and so the town was always busy. Many years later a bridge was built further upriver and the small town on the hill began to die.
Around the town there were other smaller unpaved streets with poorer houses and poorer people who worked in the houses of the more fortunate ones on the main street, and in the rice and textile factories outside town. Fifty years ago the town had already been different from other towns of its size. There was water in every house, not yet treated, but the way it came from the river; there was electricity and there were telephones. The richer families had seen to it that these basic necessities existed; they had built the hotel and the cinema and bought a property full of mango and coconut trees with a natural spring of pure water where they installed a swimming pool for their leisure. Life was good in the small town by the river. It was the hometown of Helen’s Brazilian husband.
After meeting her future husband in England, marrying him and moving to his town, Helen quickly adapted although it had been an enormous culture shock for her. She had decided to make the new country, the new town, and the new family her own and to adapt and love it all; it had nevertheless needed a huge effort on her part to settle and have a normal life. Everything had been so very different for her, a German city girl. The way the people occupied their time, the maids who did all the work, the family parties, women on one side, the men on the other, the children’s birthday parties with lots of little cakes and a great number of children with their nannies and parents. The cinema was the only distraction from the daily routine besides the weekends spent at the pool.
Mercifully there was no television at that time and not the habit of children hypnotized in front of the screen munching away at awfully harmful stuff, ruining their lives. The children had the run of the town; they got healthy exercise and could not get lost because everybody knew everybody’s children. There was no crime at that time. Children were not kidnapped. The people slept with open windows and often not even the doors were locked at night. The climate was good, there was always a fresh breeze and during the rainy season it could even get quite cool. Some times at full moon, some young men walked through the town serenading their sweethearts. Life was very good.
Helen had three babies in rapid succession and a few years later yet another one. She had them all the natural way, astounding the whole town, was home from hospital the day after, her husband always with her, holding her hand, protecting her. The children kept her very busy and she and her husband delighted in them. They went everywhere in the surrounding countryside, flying kites on the airstrip, visiting family in nearby towns and making longer trips to the nearest big city at the beach. They went to farms, rode horses, and spent holidays at the family’s beach house. In the evenings at home Helen and her husband played cards, listened to the few records and read the hundred or so books they had brought with them from England. They received Time Magazine, researched in their Encyclopedia Britannica and listened to the BBC. Indirectly they took part of what was going on in the world, although they often felt as if they were living on the moon, far removed from the real world.
Helen’s husband worked in the family’s textile factory; they soon bought their own house; her mother came to visit, which for her meant leaving Germany for the very first time. They were a happy family; the children grew up healthy and well behaved and were their pride. Nothing unusual ever happened to them. They lived each day as it came, they were satisfied and they loved each other very much. Without her husband’s great love for her, Helen knew she could never have stayed in his country. Her happiness depended entirely on his love. Making friends was rather difficult, people did not understand her, could not understand her because what interested Helen did not interest them. Their talk was about people they knew, family, children, maids, cooking, sewing, embroidery, some annual charities and not much else. Few people read books. Some of the men did, but it was not considered right for a married man to talk more than superficially to a woman who was not his wife; which does not mean they talked seriously to their own wives, they all preferred to sit in their masculine round and animatedly talk their heads off about God knows what subjects, except Helen’s husband who often sat next to her in the women’s circle, which was considered strange. Nevertheless, one day he was voted the best husband in town. The women knew what they were missing.
As each child reached five years of age, it went to the nun’s college and, Helen started giving English lessons at her home and later for a short time in two schools. What with the big household, sewing all her family’s clothes, except her husband’s trousers, dedicating time to the children and her husband, writing letters to her family in Germany, going to the weddings and birthday parties with all the preparations of hours at the hairdressers, having her hair und fingernails done, visiting the sewing lady on some occasions to make a satin ball dress, she was everything all at once and she was happy.
After about ten years of this, the situation in the country changed, the government loans were stopped and all the little textile factories, whose owners had been living from hand to mouth without caring about the future, suffered great difficulties and one after the other they had to close. There was nobody to buy the factories and many of the buildings, nearly fifty years later, are still standing abandoned and blackened by time in the middle of nowhere.
It was in the year Helen’s last baby was born when finally the factory closed its doors for the last time and they had no more money. Her husband went to the next town to the North, found a job there as salesman and they moved away. A nice uncle lent them money to start anew. They stayed there for nearly a year, finding the larger town at the beach rather attractive, then moved on to another small town deep in the arid hinterland where her husband had found a government job. They made friends there and spent three wonderful years in the different climate of extreme heat and dryness during the days, but refreshing coolness during the nights. They were lucky and found a very good school for the children run by Dutch nuns, they found a large house and made friends with three families who had children the same age as theirs and together they made their lives pleasant by traveling to nearby towns, to farms, and generally had a lot of fun. They visited each other and organized great parties of each birthday.
When the three years were up, the government changed, others started to rule and her husband had to leave his job. This time they moved to an even larger city another 300 km to the North and he found a job at the state’s Electrical Company. For three years they lived in a rented house and then bought their own house. As soon as they had arrived in the large town, Helen had found a job at a language school where she stayed for eight years, first as teacher and later as coordinator. She loved it, she loved her colleagues, who were working people, and were much more like her than her husband’s family had been. She made friends; she could talk and be understood. Finally, after thirteen years, in which she had thought her brain had become rusty, she found she could learn a new teaching method and give good classes. She found the students adored her, the other teachers liked her and she earned good money.
The family settled easily into their new surroundings. The children made friends, went to good schools, got good notes, the man of the house came home punctually every evening at six thirty, and regularly brought a red rose for her, just to let her know again and again how much he loved her. Helen worked and loved being able once again to earn her own money. Her husband paid for the household, the schools and the food and Helen bought new furniture and made their home nice with all the small things like carpets and curtains and everything a woman needs to feel good in her home. She also took care of buying all their clothes. And she was able to buy her own car. They had enough to live on, and that was enough for them and they were content.
Nothing could ever change the peace, the harmony and above all the love, understanding and communication that reigned amongst them. Not the occasional worries about money, not the fact of having had to leave the town they had thought would be their home for the rest of their lives, not the death of her husband’s father, and her own father, far too soon and far away, not operations, illness, their children’s broken arms, nor disappointments and getting robbed on the street. They loved each other; Helen’s husband’s love and dedication had never changed; they were good parents, but above all, they were lovers and did not tire of each other. They depended on each other and they never despaired, they always felt perfectly secure and feared nothing. If her husband had fears when there was no money, he never told her so. Helen could just continue life as it came, day after day, living here and now without a worry in the world. As long as her husband was in command there was nothing to fear. As long as he loved her, he made her blossom.
One day he left as usual with the bigger children, to drop each one off at their school and continue on to work, but he did not come back. He never came back again. He died that same day of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was so devastating for the children and for Helen that they reeled and took years to find their way back to a life more or less normal. Every one of them suffered terribly. The father and husband had been the main stem of these five people and without him they were nothing. There followed a terrible time for each of them. His death changed their lives. Things that happened from then on could never have happened had he not left them. The old happy life was over, gone, never to return and reality set in. A reality that had been around them, but none of them had noticed it. They suddenly had to open their minds to the sadness, the loneliness, the badness, the desperation that was all around them, which they had not known about. None of them ever really recovered from the blow of losing this wonderful man.
He was buried in the big town and two years later his mother took his bones to the family tomb in the small town on the hill.
God granted Helen faith and she joined a church and had Bible studies. All the sermons seemed to be directed at her and they comforted her. Here at last, after the terrible years of loneliness she could believe that there was a God who loved her and that there was a reason for everything, even when we cannot fathom it.
One evening, driving home late, she felt as if her husband put his hand on her leg, as he used to do when she drove and he sat next to her. She knew immediately that it was his presence and was immensely grateful. She talked to him for a while, as if he were actually there sitting next to her and told him she missed and loved him. This lasted only a few seconds, but Helen was sure it had been he himself. Another time she was sitting in church singing the lovely songs they sung at the beginning of each service with not a thought in her head except the music. Suddenly she felt his hands on her shoulders as if he were standing behind her. She leaned back, stopped singing and concentrated on him, telling him once more in her mind that she missed him, hoped he was well and that she had not stopped loving him. Just like the other time, it lasted a few seconds and he was gone.
The years passed, the children married, left home, Helen found another man to live with, they moved to a different house, then on to a small apartment. Helen had never stopped working, had moved from the language school to hotels teaching the staff and was then working as a translator at home, completing her small pension to pay the ever rising bills. Through the church she had found psychological therapy and the panic attacks and fears, that had begun to dominate her life, got a little better, but always loomed and never left her completely.
Thirty eight years had passed since they had left the small town by the river and Helen could not bring herself to go back there to look at her husband’s tomb, but she did not want to die without having seen where her love was. Everybody around her knew she wanted to go, but whenever the chance appeared to go, all courage left her and she was afraid.
One day a cousin called and said she would drive there with her husband and there was plenty of space in the car to take her along. They would all stay at the cousin’s mother’s house and that Helen was very welcome to come along. It took Helen a few hours to decide. She knew this would be her last chance and so she accepted. She had to go. It was ridiculous to put it off again and again. It was cowardly and negligent and she did not want to die without having seen where her man was buried.
They had a good trip; Helen felt fine and had no fear, which she had dreaded so much. They reached the little town. It looked white in the sun, the streets were still miraculously clean, everything wonderfully familiar as if she had never left. Most of the large houses that once belonged to her husband’s family were empty and abandoned, the weeds in the gardens having substituted the beautiful flowers that used to grow there in the past. Some older people recognized her and knew her name and talked to her, sadly remembering the good times of the past. Most of the family was dead or gone and the cousin’s mother, who lived alone in her large beautiful house called the place a town of strangers. But it was still a good town, it was still different and Helen could picture herself living there again, except for the fact that it was so far away from larger centers. It was about four hours distant by car to any other larger city. The temperature was several degrees lower than in the large city because miles of greenery, instead of concrete, surrounded the town. And there was the wide sluggish river flowing past it, refreshing the air.
Helen went to the cemetery. She had pictured herself, kneeling there, praying, talking to her husband, and probably crying. As she reached the small walled in cemetery and found the large family tomb, she stood at it, passed her hand over the familiar names, but she felt nothing. There was nothing there for her. She had been sure she would feel some contact with her husband, but she did not. She left and decided there was no need to go back again before leaving.
She walked through the open gate of his parents’ house where she herself had lived before moving away. A house full of memory scenes, the whole family united on the steps leading up to the terrace to take their picture; the presence of her mother in the picture. She saw her small children running about the garden, herself sitting on a bank let in a wall, the sweet scent of the flowers in the garden, the sounds of a piano played softly. As she walked around the place through the high weeds, stamping her feet to scare away eventual snakes, she looked around, but as at the cemetery, she felt nothing. She felt no presence of anybody there; no tears welled up in her. She felt only sadness for the good times that would not come back, but at the same time she was grateful for all the happiness that had come to her there. There was nothing there for her now. She left and carefully closed the gate. There was a sign saying the house was for sale.
She decided she did not need to go back there either. If she had looked for anything in the town, she did not find it. She took pictures of views, of the hospital where her children had been born, of the beloved river and some lovely old houses, the wide main street to take back to her children who had left so young that they did not remember much of the town they were born in.
Her cousin and Helen visited a museum, a monastery, admired a new walk by the river, the longer river front that turned it into a promenade. And all the time something pulled her back to the house, she knew she had to go there again. The morning before they left, she went through the gate again and walked around the house, looked up at the many closed windows, even tried the doors, but they were locked and she had to content herself with walking through the wild weeds. Once again she found nothing, not even a familiar shrub to take back with her to remember the house by.
As she reached the gate and looked back once more, she suddenly saw a very red rose in the middle of the garden at the side of the house in front of the bank she had often sat on while her children played in the garden. She had not seen the rose before, nor the first day, nor this day and yet it was there, very red, standing out above the weeds and she could not understand how she had missed it while looking everywhere. She waded through the weeds once again and picked it, stinging her finger. Then she broke off all the thorns and took it back to her cousin’s mother’s house. She put the rose in a glass of water and told everyone that she had brought a rose from her old house. She meant to take the rose with her, press it in a book and keep it to remind her of the house, of the town, of the times spent there, but they left early the next morning and she forgot it on the table in the hall.
Next morning as she woke, still with her eyes closed, she felt she was back in her own bed and suddenly there came into her mind the thought of the rose. She said to herself: A rose! And as that sunk in, she suddenly opened her eyes and said aloud: My God, a rose! The significance of the rose had finally registered in her mind and she could hardly believe what her mind told her. A rose from her husband, a miracle God had worked for her. She then thought of the time when her husband used to come home at night, handing her a red rose to put in her little vase, embracing and kissing her while all the children came running up waiting their turn to embrace and kiss him and be hugged safely in his strong arms.
Tears welled up in Helen’s eyes. She could not believe it. Then she remembered the poem he had spoken on the tape of the first tape recorder he had given her one Christmas. She opened the book on the marked page that was always by her bedside to comfort her when she needed to read of his great love for her. She read: O my luve is like a red, red rose. She read through the whole poem by Robert Burns and cried and cried. He had come again though it were ten thousand mile. The man who loved her had given her a rose for the last time and told her he still loved her.
It was such a devastating thought, such an incredible idea; it brought her so much happiness and lightness of heart that she walked on clouds for several weeks after. Nothing could explain the rose except what she thought it meant. A gift, a declaration of love.
She had learned an enormous lesson in the lovely little town on the hill. She had learned that our bones are nothing; they belong to the body God permitted our souls to inhabit for a while and then became stardust again from where they had come in the first place. The soul dwelt in another place, it could never be found in a cemetery, nor in a house or a town, it was everywhere, all around. She learned that our souls are eternal and live on. She also learned that true love never dies.
Helen had not been back to the small town she had lived in for ten years where her married life had begun and where her four children had been born.
It was a lovely little town sitting on a small hill above the big river, with pretty large and small houses in bright and light colors, with the sweet scents of tropical flowers in their gardens filling the air.
The town was clean and neat there on the hill looking down on the river. It consisted principally of a wide cobble stoned main street which divided further down by a praça into two narrow streets where the houses on both sides were smaller and stood closer together. These two narrow streets ended at another square and then several streets led down to the center square with the cathedral at the far end and shops on both sides and a rather grand hotel a little higher up opposite the cathedral. There was a modern cinema next to the hotel and once a week an open market in front of the big building that housed many small stores where you could find nearly everything you needed from pots and pans to furniture and sewing needles. Beyond this was the river. The river flowed red and lazy in summer, fast and clear during the rainy season. Sometimes it ran so full that the low center of town got flooded.
All transit from north to south of the country, and vice versa, had to cross this river by the ferry boat and often there were long lines of trucks waiting their turn to get on the ferry. At the time Helen lived in the town, the ferry boat was the only way to get to the other side of the river. People in small cars often stayed over night at the hotel before continuing south or north and so the town was always busy. Many years later a bridge was built further upriver and the small town on the hill began to die.
Around the town there were other smaller unpaved streets with poorer houses and poorer people who worked in the houses of the more fortunate ones on the main street, and in the rice and textile factories outside town. Fifty years ago the town had already been different from other towns of its size. There was water in every house, not yet treated, but the way it came from the river; there was electricity and there were telephones. The richer families had seen to it that these basic necessities existed; they had built the hotel and the cinema and bought a property full of mango and coconut trees with a natural spring of pure water where they installed a swimming pool for their leisure. Life was good in the small town by the river. It was the hometown of Helen’s Brazilian husband.
After meeting her future husband in England, marrying him and moving to his town, Helen quickly adapted although it had been an enormous culture shock for her. She had decided to make the new country, the new town, and the new family her own and to adapt and love it all; it had nevertheless needed a huge effort on her part to settle and have a normal life. Everything had been so very different for her, a German city girl. The way the people occupied their time, the maids who did all the work, the family parties, women on one side, the men on the other, the children’s birthday parties with lots of little cakes and a great number of children with their nannies and parents. The cinema was the only distraction from the daily routine besides the weekends spent at the pool.
Mercifully there was no television at that time and not the habit of children hypnotized in front of the screen munching away at awfully harmful stuff, ruining their lives. The children had the run of the town; they got healthy exercise and could not get lost because everybody knew everybody’s children. There was no crime at that time. Children were not kidnapped. The people slept with open windows and often not even the doors were locked at night. The climate was good, there was always a fresh breeze and during the rainy season it could even get quite cool. Some times at full moon, some young men walked through the town serenading their sweethearts. Life was very good.
Helen had three babies in rapid succession and a few years later yet another one. She had them all the natural way, astounding the whole town, was home from hospital the day after, her husband always with her, holding her hand, protecting her. The children kept her very busy and she and her husband delighted in them. They went everywhere in the surrounding countryside, flying kites on the airstrip, visiting family in nearby towns and making longer trips to the nearest big city at the beach. They went to farms, rode horses, and spent holidays at the family’s beach house. In the evenings at home Helen and her husband played cards, listened to the few records and read the hundred or so books they had brought with them from England. They received Time Magazine, researched in their Encyclopedia Britannica and listened to the BBC. Indirectly they took part of what was going on in the world, although they often felt as if they were living on the moon, far removed from the real world.
Helen’s husband worked in the family’s textile factory; they soon bought their own house; her mother came to visit, which for her meant leaving Germany for the very first time. They were a happy family; the children grew up healthy and well behaved and were their pride. Nothing unusual ever happened to them. They lived each day as it came, they were satisfied and they loved each other very much. Without her husband’s great love for her, Helen knew she could never have stayed in his country. Her happiness depended entirely on his love. Making friends was rather difficult, people did not understand her, could not understand her because what interested Helen did not interest them. Their talk was about people they knew, family, children, maids, cooking, sewing, embroidery, some annual charities and not much else. Few people read books. Some of the men did, but it was not considered right for a married man to talk more than superficially to a woman who was not his wife; which does not mean they talked seriously to their own wives, they all preferred to sit in their masculine round and animatedly talk their heads off about God knows what subjects, except Helen’s husband who often sat next to her in the women’s circle, which was considered strange. Nevertheless, one day he was voted the best husband in town. The women knew what they were missing.
As each child reached five years of age, it went to the nun’s college and, Helen started giving English lessons at her home and later for a short time in two schools. What with the big household, sewing all her family’s clothes, except her husband’s trousers, dedicating time to the children and her husband, writing letters to her family in Germany, going to the weddings and birthday parties with all the preparations of hours at the hairdressers, having her hair und fingernails done, visiting the sewing lady on some occasions to make a satin ball dress, she was everything all at once and she was happy.
After about ten years of this, the situation in the country changed, the government loans were stopped and all the little textile factories, whose owners had been living from hand to mouth without caring about the future, suffered great difficulties and one after the other they had to close. There was nobody to buy the factories and many of the buildings, nearly fifty years later, are still standing abandoned and blackened by time in the middle of nowhere.
It was in the year Helen’s last baby was born when finally the factory closed its doors for the last time and they had no more money. Her husband went to the next town to the North, found a job there as salesman and they moved away. A nice uncle lent them money to start anew. They stayed there for nearly a year, finding the larger town at the beach rather attractive, then moved on to another small town deep in the arid hinterland where her husband had found a government job. They made friends there and spent three wonderful years in the different climate of extreme heat and dryness during the days, but refreshing coolness during the nights. They were lucky and found a very good school for the children run by Dutch nuns, they found a large house and made friends with three families who had children the same age as theirs and together they made their lives pleasant by traveling to nearby towns, to farms, and generally had a lot of fun. They visited each other and organized great parties of each birthday.
When the three years were up, the government changed, others started to rule and her husband had to leave his job. This time they moved to an even larger city another 300 km to the North and he found a job at the state’s Electrical Company. For three years they lived in a rented house and then bought their own house. As soon as they had arrived in the large town, Helen had found a job at a language school where she stayed for eight years, first as teacher and later as coordinator. She loved it, she loved her colleagues, who were working people, and were much more like her than her husband’s family had been. She made friends; she could talk and be understood. Finally, after thirteen years, in which she had thought her brain had become rusty, she found she could learn a new teaching method and give good classes. She found the students adored her, the other teachers liked her and she earned good money.
The family settled easily into their new surroundings. The children made friends, went to good schools, got good notes, the man of the house came home punctually every evening at six thirty, and regularly brought a red rose for her, just to let her know again and again how much he loved her. Helen worked and loved being able once again to earn her own money. Her husband paid for the household, the schools and the food and Helen bought new furniture and made their home nice with all the small things like carpets and curtains and everything a woman needs to feel good in her home. She also took care of buying all their clothes. And she was able to buy her own car. They had enough to live on, and that was enough for them and they were content.
Nothing could ever change the peace, the harmony and above all the love, understanding and communication that reigned amongst them. Not the occasional worries about money, not the fact of having had to leave the town they had thought would be their home for the rest of their lives, not the death of her husband’s father, and her own father, far too soon and far away, not operations, illness, their children’s broken arms, nor disappointments and getting robbed on the street. They loved each other; Helen’s husband’s love and dedication had never changed; they were good parents, but above all, they were lovers and did not tire of each other. They depended on each other and they never despaired, they always felt perfectly secure and feared nothing. If her husband had fears when there was no money, he never told her so. Helen could just continue life as it came, day after day, living here and now without a worry in the world. As long as her husband was in command there was nothing to fear. As long as he loved her, he made her blossom.
One day he left as usual with the bigger children, to drop each one off at their school and continue on to work, but he did not come back. He never came back again. He died that same day of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was so devastating for the children and for Helen that they reeled and took years to find their way back to a life more or less normal. Every one of them suffered terribly. The father and husband had been the main stem of these five people and without him they were nothing. There followed a terrible time for each of them. His death changed their lives. Things that happened from then on could never have happened had he not left them. The old happy life was over, gone, never to return and reality set in. A reality that had been around them, but none of them had noticed it. They suddenly had to open their minds to the sadness, the loneliness, the badness, the desperation that was all around them, which they had not known about. None of them ever really recovered from the blow of losing this wonderful man.
He was buried in the big town and two years later his mother took his bones to the family tomb in the small town on the hill.
God granted Helen faith and she joined a church and had Bible studies. All the sermons seemed to be directed at her and they comforted her. Here at last, after the terrible years of loneliness she could believe that there was a God who loved her and that there was a reason for everything, even when we cannot fathom it.
One evening, driving home late, she felt as if her husband put his hand on her leg, as he used to do when she drove and he sat next to her. She knew immediately that it was his presence and was immensely grateful. She talked to him for a while, as if he were actually there sitting next to her and told him she missed and loved him. This lasted only a few seconds, but Helen was sure it had been he himself. Another time she was sitting in church singing the lovely songs they sung at the beginning of each service with not a thought in her head except the music. Suddenly she felt his hands on her shoulders as if he were standing behind her. She leaned back, stopped singing and concentrated on him, telling him once more in her mind that she missed him, hoped he was well and that she had not stopped loving him. Just like the other time, it lasted a few seconds and he was gone.
The years passed, the children married, left home, Helen found another man to live with, they moved to a different house, then on to a small apartment. Helen had never stopped working, had moved from the language school to hotels teaching the staff and was then working as a translator at home, completing her small pension to pay the ever rising bills. Through the church she had found psychological therapy and the panic attacks and fears, that had begun to dominate her life, got a little better, but always loomed and never left her completely.
Thirty eight years had passed since they had left the small town by the river and Helen could not bring herself to go back there to look at her husband’s tomb, but she did not want to die without having seen where her love was. Everybody around her knew she wanted to go, but whenever the chance appeared to go, all courage left her and she was afraid.
One day a cousin called and said she would drive there with her husband and there was plenty of space in the car to take her along. They would all stay at the cousin’s mother’s house and that Helen was very welcome to come along. It took Helen a few hours to decide. She knew this would be her last chance and so she accepted. She had to go. It was ridiculous to put it off again and again. It was cowardly and negligent and she did not want to die without having seen where her man was buried.
They had a good trip; Helen felt fine and had no fear, which she had dreaded so much. They reached the little town. It looked white in the sun, the streets were still miraculously clean, everything wonderfully familiar as if she had never left. Most of the large houses that once belonged to her husband’s family were empty and abandoned, the weeds in the gardens having substituted the beautiful flowers that used to grow there in the past. Some older people recognized her and knew her name and talked to her, sadly remembering the good times of the past. Most of the family was dead or gone and the cousin’s mother, who lived alone in her large beautiful house called the place a town of strangers. But it was still a good town, it was still different and Helen could picture herself living there again, except for the fact that it was so far away from larger centers. It was about four hours distant by car to any other larger city. The temperature was several degrees lower than in the large city because miles of greenery, instead of concrete, surrounded the town. And there was the wide sluggish river flowing past it, refreshing the air.
Helen went to the cemetery. She had pictured herself, kneeling there, praying, talking to her husband, and probably crying. As she reached the small walled in cemetery and found the large family tomb, she stood at it, passed her hand over the familiar names, but she felt nothing. There was nothing there for her. She had been sure she would feel some contact with her husband, but she did not. She left and decided there was no need to go back again before leaving.
She walked through the open gate of his parents’ house where she herself had lived before moving away. A house full of memory scenes, the whole family united on the steps leading up to the terrace to take their picture; the presence of her mother in the picture. She saw her small children running about the garden, herself sitting on a bank let in a wall, the sweet scent of the flowers in the garden, the sounds of a piano played softly. As she walked around the place through the high weeds, stamping her feet to scare away eventual snakes, she looked around, but as at the cemetery, she felt nothing. She felt no presence of anybody there; no tears welled up in her. She felt only sadness for the good times that would not come back, but at the same time she was grateful for all the happiness that had come to her there. There was nothing there for her now. She left and carefully closed the gate. There was a sign saying the house was for sale.
She decided she did not need to go back there either. If she had looked for anything in the town, she did not find it. She took pictures of views, of the hospital where her children had been born, of the beloved river and some lovely old houses, the wide main street to take back to her children who had left so young that they did not remember much of the town they were born in.
Her cousin and Helen visited a museum, a monastery, admired a new walk by the river, the longer river front that turned it into a promenade. And all the time something pulled her back to the house, she knew she had to go there again. The morning before they left, she went through the gate again and walked around the house, looked up at the many closed windows, even tried the doors, but they were locked and she had to content herself with walking through the wild weeds. Once again she found nothing, not even a familiar shrub to take back with her to remember the house by.
As she reached the gate and looked back once more, she suddenly saw a very red rose in the middle of the garden at the side of the house in front of the bank she had often sat on while her children played in the garden. She had not seen the rose before, nor the first day, nor this day and yet it was there, very red, standing out above the weeds and she could not understand how she had missed it while looking everywhere. She waded through the weeds once again and picked it, stinging her finger. Then she broke off all the thorns and took it back to her cousin’s mother’s house. She put the rose in a glass of water and told everyone that she had brought a rose from her old house. She meant to take the rose with her, press it in a book and keep it to remind her of the house, of the town, of the times spent there, but they left early the next morning and she forgot it on the table in the hall.
Next morning as she woke, still with her eyes closed, she felt she was back in her own bed and suddenly there came into her mind the thought of the rose. She said to herself: A rose! And as that sunk in, she suddenly opened her eyes and said aloud: My God, a rose! The significance of the rose had finally registered in her mind and she could hardly believe what her mind told her. A rose from her husband, a miracle God had worked for her. She then thought of the time when her husband used to come home at night, handing her a red rose to put in her little vase, embracing and kissing her while all the children came running up waiting their turn to embrace and kiss him and be hugged safely in his strong arms.
Tears welled up in Helen’s eyes. She could not believe it. Then she remembered the poem he had spoken on the tape of the first tape recorder he had given her one Christmas. She opened the book on the marked page that was always by her bedside to comfort her when she needed to read of his great love for her. She read: O my luve is like a red, red rose. She read through the whole poem by Robert Burns and cried and cried. He had come again though it were ten thousand mile. The man who loved her had given her a rose for the last time and told her he still loved her.
It was such a devastating thought, such an incredible idea; it brought her so much happiness and lightness of heart that she walked on clouds for several weeks after. Nothing could explain the rose except what she thought it meant. A gift, a declaration of love.
She had learned an enormous lesson in the lovely little town on the hill. She had learned that our bones are nothing; they belong to the body God permitted our souls to inhabit for a while and then became stardust again from where they had come in the first place. The soul dwelt in another place, it could never be found in a cemetery, nor in a house or a town, it was everywhere, all around. She learned that our souls are eternal and live on. She also learned that true love never dies.
