A Red Red Rose
Fanfic 100 challenge
Prompt 030: Death
Set in Season 4-5, sometime after Kindred II and before The Seed, containers a minor spoiler for Season 3, Sunday
Rated PG-13 for angst
A single rose, a memory, someone thinks of Carson Beckett. This story could be considered a sequel to my earlier story Things I Should Have Said and contains an excerpt from the same.
Author's Note: This story was inspired by my own recent loss. Seven weeks ago, my husband passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly. I was walking around my yard and took a really good look at the rosebush that grows next to my house. I looked at the roses and I remembered my husband and this is the result...
The title comes from Robert Burns much-loved poem 'My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose' which I have included at the end of this story. Thanks Rabbie, for summing up so beautifully what I lived for 15 years.
The woman stared out the kitchen window, oblivious to the water overflowing the tea kettle she held to the tap. Her eyes were drawn to the garden and she studied it with an almost clinical detachment. It had been her pride, once, but that time was a long two years past.
She didn't care about the garden anymore. She supposed she should clear the weed-choked flower beds. She supposed she should plant new flowers and prune back branches from the overgrown shrubs. It was too much effort; too much effort to do the work. Too much effort to care.
Gravity tugged the heavy kettle, demanded her attention. She sighed, shut off the tap and dumped half the water from the kettle. No point in filling it; there was no one to share tea with anyway. She wondered, briefly, why she even bothered to make the tea. She really didn't want it, but she'd done it so many times, made the tea every day for so many years, that to not make felt like a betrayal of a life time ritual. It was expected, so she did it, fulfilled a duty she no longer cared about.
She set the kettle on the battered enameled stovetop and turned up the heat. She turned back to the window and the neglected garden. Faded blossoms of perennials gone feral nodded in the late afternoon breeze. Grey clouds scudded across the sky and the laundry on the line flapped like so many wind-weary flags. She thought about collecting the washing from the line before the rain fell and dismissed it. Maybe the rains would pass her over again. They did yesterday; maybe they'd give her a reprieve on the laundry today as well.
The kettle whistled a sharp shrill screech that grated on her nerves like nails drawn down a chalkboard. She frowned and switched off the heat and poured the water over the tea bag waiting patiently in the fine bone china cup on the counter. Two sugars, a dash of cream, not milk, thank you, and the tea was ready. She cradled the cup in age-gnarled hands and turned back to the window.
Dead leaves scurried over the cracked and worn pavers. She couldn't remember the last time the leaves had been raked and the stones swept. The debris of the overgrown garden stood in mute testimony to her neglect. She wondered why she had ever cared about the garden. Her children had played there, once, but the garden hadn't witnessed the carefree laughter of children at play in many years. She doubted it would hear that laughter again in her lifetime.
The wind gusted and the sky darkened. She sighed, shrugged into a baggy shapeless sweater and rescued the laundry from the pending storm. She reached for the last piece of flapping cloth, her motions smooth and mechanical, born from years of practice. She stared at the garden wall, her eyes drawn by a flash of scarlet revealed by wind-shifted weeds. What? It couldn't be...could it?
Her hands stilled and she stood rooted, a clothespin gripped between her teeth, the shirt still partially tethered to the clothesline. The wind gusted harder, tugged at the shirt as if to rip it free of its fragile mooring and send it sailing in flight. She didn't notice; she was frozen in a memory.
A young woman and a little boy knelt in velvet soft spring grass. The warm breeze teased strands of her chestnut hair from the loose braid she wore. Yellow gardener's gloves decorated with strawberries covered her hands and she smiled at the little boy's clumsy digging with a shovel twice his size. He giggled, his clear sky-blue eyes full of life and mischief as he flipped a shovelful of dirt over her head.
"Sorry Mum," he grinned.
"It's ok, son, but let's try to keep the dirt in the pile." She smiled back, delighted that he wanted to spend this time in the garden with her.
They worked together, digging a hole for the rosebush waiting patiently for planting. It wasn't the biggest or prettiest rosebush she'd ever seen. Its branches were spindly and its leaves sparse, but he'd loved it and begged relentlessly and "please Mum, I want this one" and so they spent a sunny Saturday afternoon, planting a single straggly rosebush by the garden wall.
The bush was soon settled into the warm fertile soil and they pressed the earth down around the roots just so and watered the bush and stood back and admired their handiwork.
"Will it grow Mum? Will it get big and have pretty roses?"
She smiled. "Aye, son, it will, if you love it and take care of it. Roses are like people; they need love to thrive and grow."
"Then I'll love it and take good care of it every day and you will always have roses." His eyes sparkled with the solemn promise he made.
He'd kept his promise and the bush grew and thrived and she had roses every summer. When he moved on to make his own place in the world, she tended the rosebush. She kept it trimmed and watered and it produced fragrant crimson blossoms every year.
And then she received visitors and a letter and "We regret to inform you..." and she no longer cared for the garden and the flowers and the rosebush. The perennials went wild, scattered their seeds with the wind and overran the velvet green grass. Weeds flourished and consumed the spaces vacated by annuals, their desiccated corpses faded and brittle against the garden wall.
The first year of neglect, the rosebush grew scraggly, its branches long and bent with the weight of ungathered blossoms. It bloomed with the enthusiasm of the newly freed, until the weight of the flowers overwhelmed it and dragged it to the ground. The blossoms faded and scattered their petals across the garden like confetti from a forgotten party. They dried and cracked and drifted and she ignored them as her grief consumed her heart.
The second year, the bush leaned wearily against the wall. Weeds invaded its space and choked it from water and sunlight. It struggled and withered and huddled under the weeds. It did not bloom that year. Her heart hardened and she did not care for the garden at all.
She stared at the crimson patch, a bright splash of color against the drab, dreary grey day. She dropped the clothespin and the shirt, ignored the wind as it made off with its prize. She only had eyes for that bright red, for that swatch of color that seemed so out of place. She slipped her hands in the pockets of her sweater. The crackle of paper under her fingers distracted her and she pulled an envelope from her pocket. She smoothed creases from the heavy cream paper; her fingers traced the familiar handwriting and her heart clenched.
She didn't open the letter. She didn't need to; she'd long ago memorized the words.
Dear Mum,
...
You always asked that I do my best, that I try to make the world a little better than I found it. I don't know if I've succeeded. But I try, every day, to be just a little better than I was yesterday. It's not always easy, but then anything worth doing isn't, I suppose. I know I haven't always been my best to you and I can't promise that I won't make mistakes and that I won't hurt you again. All I can do is promise that I'll do my best; that I'll try to be better than I am today.
I miss you, Mum, more than you can imagine. I don't know when I'll be home again, but until then, please forgive this melancholy mood. And Mum, always remember that I love you. I know I never said it enough, not when it mattered. I never said it for the little things, like the cup of tea waiting on the table after school on a cold day. I always saved it for the big things, like family gatherings for holidays. I've learned these last few years that it's the little things that matter the most. It's the little things we remember and cherish and hold most dear. I have regrets; more than I can possibly count. After all, I am a man, foolish and flawed, and men have regrets.
My biggest one is that I never said these things to you when I should have. I never told you my greatest hopes, my biggest dreams, my deepest fears. I never realized how short our time together would be when I took this job. I never realized how great the distance between us. I regret that time and distance have pulled us apart and that I never tried to do anything about that. All I can say is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the pain and the disappointment and separation. One day, none of this will matter and I'll be free to tell you the secrets I'm sworn to keep. Maybe this letter explains some of it. I don't know. I hope so. Until then, know that I love you. I always have. I always will...
She folded the letter and put it back in her pocket and choked back the tears that threatened to fall from her sky-blue eyes. The wind gusted again and she stared at the red splotch against the grey stone garden wall and remembered a little boy with dark hair and bright blue eyes. She remembered a strong young man off to university to study medicine. She remembered a handsome man, his eyes shining and full of promise as he packed his bags and said a final good-bye and walked out the door to find his place in the world.
She knelt in the brittle grass and cupped the perfect red rose in her careworn hands. Her fingers stroked the velvet soft petals, her touch as light and gentle as it was when she'd stroked his hair that time he was sick with chicken pox. A single tear slid from her eye and she made no attempt to brush it away or hold it back. It was joined by others, a trickle, a river and then a flood and Mary Beckett cried for the son she'd lost in a world far away.
"Roses are like people; they need love to grow and thrive."
"Then I'll love it and take good care of it every day and you will always have roses."
Mary stood and walked to the garden shed. The door hinges were stiff and rusted and squealed in protest as she tugged the door open. She pulled on stiff, dirty, faded yellow gardener's gloves, the index finger on the left hand threadbare and worn away through the years. She gathered the shears and a trimmer and attacked the weeds that choked and smothered the rosebush. Her tears flowed as she worked and she remembered. She remembered a little boy, a gawky shy teenager, a self-conscious young man. She remembered watching him as he grew and thrived and gained the respect of his friends and colleagues.
She remembered the people he'd worked with, how they came to her and shared their memories of him. She remembered the sadness and the tears and she remembered the laughter and the admiration. She knew he was respected, but more than that; she knew he was loved.
She looked at the rosebush, its single crimson blossom a testament to the tenacity of life and love in the face of adversity and grief. She smiled through her tears, brushed her fingertips across the petals once again.
Mary Beckett turned from the rosebush, returned her gardening tools to the shed and hauled her laundry into the house as the first drops of rain fell. She poured the cold tea down the sink. She filled the kettle, put it on the burner and turned up the heat. She turned and looked out the window at the rosebush standing proud against the solid stone wall.
"I love you Carson. And I miss you. You're a good man and I am proud to be your Mum. I always was. I always will be."
My Love is like a red red rose
Robert Burns
O, my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun!
O I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!