Six months after we moved into our newer and bigger house, I brought my parents to stay with us. I hoped they would like to stay longer but they insisted on leaving one month earlier as they always did for their previous visits. And that’s their last visit to me in California.
I always loved the big roses in California and finally, I got a kitchen with a view where I wanted to plant the tallest rose bushes so I envisioned seeing them sticking out their beautiful rosebuds in front of me while I was washing dishes and looking out through the big windows in front of the sink.
I ordered six bare-root to-grow-to-4–5-feet-tall heirloom roses online and planned to plant them in the small patch of the garden bed underneath the kitchen window.
Dad volunteered to clear up the garden bed which by then was full of the deep-rooted sea green juniper bushes.
It took him a whole week to clean it up, dug out two feet deep holes of gravels, and replaced them with munches and garden soils.
We put all these six different kinds of baby heirloom roses down.
Before long, the roses were attacked by the lone hare who seemed to be a permanent resident in our backyard bushes for many years. He was a very cautious but curious creature and loved to take a bite for anything we planted in the backyard. Most of the time when we noticed him, he was almost on his way to jump back into the bushes with a flash of a white round fluffy tail. We called him Mr. White Tail.
Dad tried all means to protect the roses from the curious Mr. White Tail but failed.
In the next year when the rose started to grow again, only the yellow one survived.
The lone yellow rose finally reached a height of four feet when dad passed away. Mom survived dad’s death but rapidly lost all her memory in twelve months after that. By that time, Mr. White Tail also finally lost the hide and seek battle with the hawk that always circled around on top of our house and was brutally killed. I found out by a scoop of his grayish-brown fur and few drops of his bloody bone parts scattering in the center of our side yard lawn which was his most favorite spot to eat the grass.
I could never be able to see the roses from our kitchen sink area as I originally hoped. The lone yellow rose tree was at the far side so most of the time, the roses were just quietly blossoming against the kitchen wall.
Yet, occasionally, it has flowers facing up the kitchen window. In the evening, if I sat near the garden table, I turned around, I would suddenly see one lonely big yellow rose to stand in the dark, facing the kitchen window, collecting the lights and glowing.
And that always reminded me of my dear dad and the sharp pain of grieving for my parents.
Tonight, I just got a message from my mom’s doctor and she is worsening stage.
And this lone big yellow rose of my dad is glowing in the dark and offering a special kind of pray for me and releasing a special comforting for my sorrow for the first time.
