Due to a thick stratus layer this morning, I enjoyed the much cooler temperature blowing through my window from under one of my Mexican blankets. After a few hard stacked workouts, physical activity is pretty much out of the question today, so I decided to go check out the rose garden.
I walked slowly through the garden, collecting dew off the grass onto my toes, taking pictures and sniffing the roses. They all need a little trimming, but I'm wondering if maybe summer is not the time to do it?
There's also some redwoods struggling to survive there, as I've seen throughout the city. At some point, someone thought it a great idea to bring some redwoods in from the coast and plant them around the city. That's ok, I tried that too. They never made it past the seed stage but that might have something to do with the epic fall they took from the window sill one particularly windy day. Anyway, San Jose is a little too hot and dry for redwoods, even though they flourish just a few miles away in the Santa Cruz mountains.
As I wandered through the roses, I had a vivid memory of one of my birthday's when I was a teenager. I came running through the house in a hurry and almost smacked head on into my dad. In his hands were a mixed bouquet of roses that he had clipped from his rose garden for me. Beautiful roses that he had labored for and tended to with love. It melted my heart then, it crushes my heart now. The fragrance and beauty of roses will forever be bittersweet to me. I remember the hours he spent on them, the weekends he hauled us out into the front yard and showed us how to properly clip the roses, pull weeds from around them and make sure they're getting enough water. I remember the beautiful roses sitting in a mason jar on the dining table, year round.
Grief has revealed itself to be a permanent fixture. I still cry when I think of him. It still makes me feel like collapsing, like I did in the driveway that November morning, crushed by the deepest despair I may ever know. I'm still learning to live in a new "normal" and every day is a test of whether or not I'll make it.
As I sat on the bench in the rose garden, I turned my head and stared at the roses from under the bill of my ball cap and I suddenly felt Christa sitting next to me, with her blue ball cap on, sighing and holding my hand, both understanding. I thought back to the day we walked through the cemetery, sharing grief but each lost in our own version. She was so brave to listen to the details of when I found him, even though it would later cause her nightmares, and me guilt.
But as I always do, I took a deep shaky breath and stood. I walked through the roses to the trellis that led to the jeep, and moved forward. Forward but never on.
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