Yellow Roses 2

Yellow roses for my mother's birthday, now dried, trimmed, and kept in a glass bowl.



I wrote earlier about the year-long ritual of remembrance I am performing for my mother and father. I've decided to keep all the roses, dried, that I buy for my parents' memories, in a bowl on the mantle.

I will add each round of roses to this glass bowl throughout the year, until the ritual of remembrance is complete.



When my parents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary—a major milestone, in this day and age—Dad gave Mom fifty yellow roses. They were astonishing. Later, Mom kept all of the roses, trimmed and dried, in two circular vases. They stayed on the front hall table until both Mom and Dad had died, and we had to move and sell the house. I decided to keep these two vases full of dried yellow roses. They currently sit on my mantlepiece in my new home. Each vase had one rose added to it last year; one rose each from the flower arrangements from each of their funerals. (Other flowers from the funeral displays were pressed and kept by other members of my family.)



The bowl in these photos is handblown glass, one of a set of four that I have. They were made by one of my best friends when she was a grad student in art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, blowing glass in the glass lab. This good friend has the same birthday as my father; two or three of my other best friends have the same birthday as my mother. This is the web of synchronicities that tie us all together. This is what the Universe is made of: interwoven threads of relationship and connection.