Roses in the Rain

It was funny how the roses never seemed to mind the rain. Instead, they seemed to embrace the water that fell on them, cushioning the drops with soft fuzz that wrapped around them comfortingly.

Jenny could find no comfort from the roses now. Not when they had supposed to have been comfort for someone else. But what did the dead want with comfort?  Some would say the dead had found ultimate comfort already. Nothing could be gained from fuzzy roses that now sat exposed to the rain.

How different the morning had been from this dismal afternoon, fading in showers towards evening. In the morning, Jenny had been up at 6:05 as usual and had felt hopeful. Grandma was doing well, after all, and responding well to treatment; what should she, Jenny, bring Grandma for a present?  Something cheery, something to evoke all of the warm hugs that she had received from Grandma over the years. When Jenny saw the roses in the store window on her way to work, she mentally picked them out immediately; their velvety smoothness and bright red seemed just right somehow. Roses for Grandma it would be.

Jenny’s arms hung limply at her sides as she stood at the bus stop, gazing unseeingly out at the traffic, the bouquet drooping toward the wet, gum-studded pavement. She had been too late; there was an awful finality about that thought, and she felt frozen, as though waiting for her grief to thaw. Grandma would never receive her red roses. If Jenny hadn’t planned her visit to the hospital for after work, she would have been able to see her one more time. But she had been too late. One phone call as she stepped out of her office had been enough to tell her that the roses were pointless.

In the rain, with the plastic wrapping around the bouquet getting clammy under her hand, Jenny finally could cry. She could finally understand that an ending had come, and her part in it had not been as she had envisioned. She would have to say goodbye without seeing Grandma ever again.

It took Jenny a few moments to realize that she had just missed her bus. Distracted as she was, she hadn’t stepped forward as it had driven by, and so it had departed without stopping, its wheels flicking up more water which sprinkled the street behind it as it went. Jenny stood still for a moment, tears still on her face; then she slowly turned and walked away. The bouquet slipped in her hand. She deliberately let it drop. She had no use for red roses now.

Commuters standing by the bus shelters and passing along the sidewalk, hoods drawn up around their faces, glanced briefly at the flowers on the ground, but no one said anything or made any moves towards them. The rain increased a little, and a siren started up somewhere in the city. Then a young man darted forward from the crowd and picked up the roses.

Somehow they still stayed beautiful and comforting after having touched the sidewalk. Plastic sleeve muddied, the petals still seemed to kiss the rain, taking it in, accepting it. The young man looked at them for a moment, then hurried after Jenny’s retreating back.

“Hey!  Hey, hello?”

Jenny turned around, wet face upturned to the man clutching the bouquet.

“These yours?  Did you drop them?” he asked.

“I don’t want them. Keep them, give them away to someone who needs them,” she mumbled, already turning away.

“Okay. Take them.”

Startled, Jenny faced the man again. “What?”

He smiled. “Take them. I think you need them.”  He held them out to her, a spot of beauty in a grey wet city.

Slowly Jenny reached out and wrapped her hand around the stems, her fingers touching his, the man still smiling encouragement.

They were strange, those flowers. They embraced the rain, uncomplaining, not wilting. They changed two lives that day, connecting different paths; and yet, the flowers weren’t the only roses in the rain. Suffering is terrible; but it can change us, sometimes in astonishing ways. Feeling strength despite her pain, Jenny took the bouquet from the stranger.

“Thank you,” she said.