by Lorraine Snow

Created on: June 03, 2008   Last Updated: June 10, 2008

Wearily raising her, oh so heavy, head, she gazed blankly through the window over the sea of green. How things had changed. This had been her longed for project - longed for since she was a child in inner city Birmingham, with only a tiny, fenced in clay yard to grow up in.Her walk to school caused her to walk past a gateway, from which emanated the sweet delicious scent of Roses, and which gave birth (or root) to her constant daydream of a garden full of this heavenly scent - a garden of her very own.

Along came love, marriage and with them a wonderful green canvas of a garden on which she could realize her ofttimes daydream. "How wonderful" they said, "How wonderful, especially as you have waited so long." Roses, Roses, Roses carefully tended and protected, from frost from bugs, from disease, care rewarded unfailingly by blossom and scent to charm the hardest soul.

And the love and marriage continued but with now came another - a baby! "How wonderful," they all said, "How wonderful, especially as you have waited so long." Baby, baby, baby - she could not escape, not for one minute it seemed. The crying, the unrelenting tiredness, the sadness, oh the sadness and the longing for death. "Postnatal depression" they said, "Chronic Postnatal Depression".

Six years it lasted, six years. Six years away from her roses. No care was given them, no pruning, no protection from frost, pest or disease. Did they stoop low also, were they ravaged by illness too?

At last the day did come, when she walked into her garden again, stealing herself to face the ruin, the mountain of weeds, that neglect had borne. But she smelt that scent, that heavenly scent and beheld the buds and blossoms bursting with health. How did this happen they did not know.

My dream lived on while I lay in pain, yet not a dream but true.

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