by Willowmeana

Created on: May 21, 2009   Last Updated: October 26, 2009

It was summer, and I had just finished my freshman year at highschool. The hot California sun beat down on my window as I looked down into the backyard from my room. The seemingly dead rosebush there was of course the eye sore I saw, and I sighed softly in exasperation. It hadn't bloomed since the year my grandfather died. Those roses were his pride joy, I remember his blue eyes crinkling in a smile when he looked at his roses, plucking dead ones from the bush gently, and lovingly. After he died, I had tried to keep them alive. I had cared for him just as he taught me. When they wilted, withered and disappeared I looked up how to care rose bushes online, in books, I even called flower shops for advice. I did everything, yet they refused to bloom. It was as if they were in mourning for the absence of my grandfather. I sighed sadly, were those roses alive, they would be a happy reminder of my beloved grandfather, the one whom I was so close too ever since I was a little girl.s

I stood then, brushing away quickly memories of his death, blinking away the stinging tears that still followed closely after thinking about Grandpa and his roses, I walked down the hall towards the stairs to once again go spend some time trying to revive the roses before my mom decided to pull them up by their roots. As I reached the back door, and headed towards the rose bush my mind was already wondering back to the day that I found out Grandpa had died, despite my best efforts to think about something else. I had been sitting in front of the roses, when mom came out crying. She sat next to me in the grass, and took my hands. I was sitting in front of the roses, because that's where I'd made my perched. Grandpa had gone into the hospital a few days before and hadn't come home yet. I was younger then, in seventh grade.

"Hunny, Grandpa isn't coming home." My mom told me gently, not sure how to break the news to me. I blinked at her, confused. My Grandfather could unscrew screws with his fingers, could fix roofs and waterpipes, made things out of metal, and kept our roses alive. Him dying was the last thing I could think of.

"Is he going to one of the old peoples homes?" I asked, my eyes growing wide. "But he doesn't want too!" I gushed before my mother had a chance to answer. She was shaking her head, crying more hard now. "Mommy what's wrong?" I asked as my heart grew heavy. Something was wrong, and I somehow knew then that Grandpa wasn't going to an old folks home.

"Grandpa passed away

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