Life is a Rose

My great-grandparents had an affinity for roses.  My great-grandma also had a love of quotes, poetry, and writing in many forms.  When she was limited in her physical abilities in her later years, she spent many hours studying her bible, reading Reader's Digest and writing notebook after notebook full of poems jokes and little stories she found that held her fancy.  When I was younger we spent long summer days reading those poems and stories together and discussing the meaning of them - both the obvious and the more subtle.  


When I went off to college there were some family tensions and she reached out to me often by sending me those little inspirations.  One she often referred to was "The Rose".  Some pretty little papers were passed along to my daughter and I a few months ago, notepads that were mostly used up but had fun little designs on the paper.  They had belonged to my great-grandma and inside the cover of one was this, in her writing: