Bed of Roses

13.5 cm x 14 cm x 4.5 cm

Bed of Roses ‘He never promised her a rose garden’

We found the letters. Love letters, buried for decades, were unearthed. The discreet courtship, spanning years; the delicate longing, spelled out between the lines. It is all there. And the promise, of hope & of love. The promise of a life to be made, together. And the promise of the covenant not to be broken. So hard to read those words, knowing that in the end, all would be broken. Her beating heart, laid down, for a man and a dream.

Hers was no bed of roses.

Or so the story goes. But I am nothing in this; only the one who came to love her son decades later & one who lives, by way of proximity & bloodlines, with her losses every day. The ripple effect. Pain, as love, is not finite. It does not disappear into some sweet abyss of ‘alas’. Just as the thorn on the bush, it lies in wait. For the day when all is forgotten, able to pierce again, the un-expecting heart. It can reach into generations.

I wish I could sit a while, with her in that garden.

To hear her give account. To hold, in my own two hands, her heart & her suffering. To abide. And then, after all, to offer her the gift that was never given. The promise kept. To tell her that in the end, he found his way back. He found a way to love her by keeping covenant with his children. To tell her how love & blessing found their way to those children, in spite of her fear. Her prayers, fervent & faithful, answered.

For alas, love is infinite, lying in wait. It reaches into generations.

~ Brangwynne Purcell