May 4

Today, my Mother’s rose tree bloomed for the first time. My Mother died on September 12 last year, at the age of 106, and her devoted friend, Izzi, gave me the rose tree in her memory. It stands outside my study window and I have watched the buds hourly for signs of colour. Towards the end of her long life, the only things that gave Mum real pleasure were visits from me and Izzi and the flowers she’d always loved. We’d bring her roses, tulips, daffodils. (I could never find her favourite violets, and I’m not sure she would have remembered they were her favourite in her last few years of life).

Mum had her own taxonomy of flowers. Carnations were “garage flowers”, lilies reminded her of death (I think she forgot she had them in her wedding bouquet – or maybe she remembered, since the marriage died), she disliked chrysanthemums because they were autumnal, she wouldn’t have anemones in the house (Death again) or red and white flowers in the same vase (blood and bandages). Trish would bring armfuls of glorious lilac from her garden and I would hear Mum muttering “Unlucky”as she threw them in the bin. In fact, though I’ve never thought about it ’til now, florists must have been places of extreme danger for my Mother.

There were pink roses on her dressing table as she lay dying, an echo of the vases that had filled the room at her 106th birthday party only two months before.

The memorial rose is called Emily Bronte and has been chosen with such care, it even boasts” a strong tea fragrance”. Nothing in the world could remind me more of my Mother than “a strong tea fragrance”. She drank at least six cups a day – milk in first – in her favourite bone china mug with a picture of herself drinking tea on the front. She loved that mug and showed it proudly to everyone who visited. I think the idea of a picture of herself drinking tea on something out of which she was drinking tea, delighted her.

I drink as many cups as she did and today, I stood in front of the tree drinking from her cup and convincing myself I could smell an answering scent of tea from the roses.

As Izzi said when he gave it to me, I don’t need anything to remind me of my Mother. She was with me so long, I fancied she would be with me for ever. But I am SO glad to have it. As I read the latest lockdown news or listen to the day’s horrific death toll, I look up from my computer screen and the roses give me pause to remember her beauty and her love.