You’ll notice a single red rose on the front of the old pump organ, which is a multi-generational family treasure. We put it there as a reminder of what we feel was a true miracle, although many would consider it trivial, I suppose. I’ll tell you about it and see what you think.
Somewhere around 1960 my Grandmother Vandall was moved from Meadow Bridge, WV to Arlington, VA where she lived with one of my aunts for a short while. She decided that she wanted to come live with my parents, so she was then moved to Hampton, VA to my parents home to live. And oh, did we enjoy our grandma so much! And she enjoyed her grandchildren and great grandchildren coming in often to visit with her. This was my grandmother’s final seven years, during which she suffered with cancer, till it finally claimed her life. She died at the age of 86 years, in December 1968.
The side yard of Grandma’s home in West Virginia was covered with beautiful flowers and rosebushes, giving her lots of pleasure. The family and friends who came to visit her there always enjoyed looking at the wonderful array of blossoms. Sometime before she left Meadow Bridge, WV she gave my mother and father some of her wonderful flowers to transplant around their home in Hampton. She also gave my mother the old antique pump organ, which was bought for my mother when she was just a young girl. This thing about the organ was interesting - - it had been in my mother’s family for a while, then in my father’s family for a while, then back in my mother’s family! That was several generations before my mother and father ever knew each other. It seems to me that my mother and father were willed to meet by God, Himself, because of the way things came about in their families.
Back to the rose. One rosebush in particular that Mother brought from Grandma’s home in WV was very faithful to bloom it’s best each year. But over many years it became not quite so vigorous and bloomed less and less. We thought several years it would surely die out, but it kept on as best it could, even while Mother took as great care of it as she knew how. Dad passed away in 1996, and Mother lived on in the homeplace and continued to keep up the yard and flowers. Mother finally was unable to do the yard work herself, and depended on the kind folks from West Hampton Baptist Church
next door to cut her grass as they did for the church each week, while she gave donations to the church for the care of the church grounds as well as for cutting her grass. At one point we thought the old rosebush was dead, but Mother refused to let us dig it up.
Mother gradually grew more frail, finally became very ill in November 2004, and only lived a couple of weeks longer. She passed away on December 2, 2004. While we six brothers and sisters were at her home making plans for her funeral and burial, my husband, Don, was walking the yard and noticed there was one lovely, perfect, red rose blooming on that old rosebush. And it had seven perfect green leaves on the stem with it. He was telling me about it the night before Mother’s funeral, and we decided to go early the next day to get that lovely rose and give it to Mother before her funeral began. I asked Don to be very careful not to disturb any dew drops on the rose or leaves, but to gently cut it and bring it over to the church next door in time for the funeral. He did this, and we gently placed that lovely, perfect, red rose in Mother’s hands, with dew drops in tact. She looked so beautiful to us. Our sweet Mother was a December rose, herself. You see, Mother was born on December 27, 1916. We said she was our December rose. And so we gave a December rose from her, and Grandma’s, very old red rose bush to our December rose, Mother. It went with her to the grave. We think it was a miracle that there was a single, perfect, red rose to present to our mother, a December rose, the very last time we saw her. Oh, how we loved, and still love, our mother.
A few months later Don went back to the homeplace to dig up the roots of that rosebush. We wanted to plant it in our yard for memory's sake, and were so hopeful that it had survived and would again bloom in the spring. But the rosebush was dead. It had lived long enough to present the gift of that one perfect, red rose with the seven lovely green leaves to our December Rose Mother as she left this world to join Dad, their stillborn baby daughter, Rose Lee (third-born of their 7 children), Grandma, grandsons Michael and baby Justin, the rest of our departed loved ones, and our Lord in Heaven. They are there now, waiting for the rest of us to come join them some sweet day. And we are all now “looking homeward” and waiting for the Lord to call us when He is ready. Don said "I wouldn't be surprised if that lovely rose is right there with Mother, Dad, Grandma, Baby Rose, Michael and Baby Justin when we get there to join them."
