My friend Barbara’s husband, Charlie, passed away after nearly seventy years of marriage. The week of his death, she placed a small rosebud in a vase on her windowsill. Weeks passed, then months, and the rose continued to live. Its leaves stayed supple and pink; it did not wilt. She showed it to me, incredulous and teary-eyed. She saw it as symbolic of her husband’s continued presence in her life.
I didn’t think much of it at the time. But, lately, I’ve found myself considering Charlie’s rose again. What if time is like a fragrance, or a rose, whose rate of decay we perceive only when we are not one with it?
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